NASA Priorities Out of Whack?

amerinese writes "Just last week, we saw a story on NASA reconsidering the fate of the DAWN mission, another reminder of the space agency's budget woes. Gregg Easterbrook over at Slate.com argues not only is the budget a little short, but NASA's priorities are all wrong. From the article: 'For at least a decade, it's been clear that the space shuttle program is a clunker. Nonetheless, NASA's funding remains heavy on the shuttle and the space station, while usually slighting science. This year's proposed budget for fiscal 2007 takes the cosmic cake.' Is NASA just not thinking creatively enough?"

Comments

I mostly agree

[liliafan]

Whilst I agree with the vast majority of this article, the planet finder project should be given a much higher budget, study of the earth should have a much higher priority, I think the author leaves the Near Earth Object study a little low on the list, I would think this should be at least number 2 on the list of priorities, first save the Earth from itself the study of moisture is important so this is fine, second save the Earth from a huge chunk of rock eliminating mankind, from there on down yes cool study other object in our solar system, study possible locations for other life out there.

Additionally I am not sure about the moonbase, until we get a definitive answer on the question of if water exists on the moon I don't see the point in building a base there, really we should be putting a lot more focus on studying the moon, what rare minerals can we find, is there any water anywhere that can be used to fuel spacecraft travelling further than the moon. These questions can all be answered with probes and possibly robotic landers we should be putting more effort into studying in this way before we even consider sending people back let alone building a base there.

I am interested in the study of the universe, I am curious about development of galaxies and black holes but I am more interested in protecting our species from an extinction level event either from us damaging the planet or from an asteroid wiping us out. It seems like NASA is really just trying to get popular support here. For the unknowing masses building a moonbase would seen really impressive, having mankind walk on the moon again would be a great advertisment for NASA, "hey look guys we still got it". Given the set backs they have experienced in recent years I can kinda understand their reasoning to feel like they need the public behind them again, but I think a report saying we have found a way to save the Earth would be a lot better for their publicity than a report saying we have some guys bringing more rocks back from the moon.

Re:I mostly agree

[Daniel_Staal]

There is one good reason to build a Moonbase: Telescopes on the far side of the Moon are as insulated as you can get from interference from human sources. A good set of telescopes, in all spectrums, on the far side of the Moon should be an eventual goal of NASA. (Not that we need people there to run them...)

The only other reason for a base on the Moon is turism: It's a place where a person can walk on the surface of another major body and be back within a few months.

Neither of these should make a Moonbase top priority.

Re:I mostly agree

[belg4mit]

No, there are plenty of other reasons for a base on the moon. Space based solar power for one, or helium-3 mining for another. It's also a good mine for anything else that you want to send somewhere. Why build something at the bottom of a hole and waste all that energy to get it out if you can build it--from nuts to soup--in space?

FYI the moon is not tidally locked and your telescope would only be usable about 1/3 -1/2 of the time, this is the same reason why you'd need 3 beaming stations for lunar based solar power.

Re:I mostly agree

[Kitsune818]

I saw a demonstration of this in the biography "Total Recall".

Re:I mostly agree

[Dashing Leech]

I would tend to agree somewhat. However there is one huge hole in the complaints and arguments. NASA has a lot less control over its priorities that most people think. It gets its priorities largely from Congress. And despite the implications of the article, it is not driven largely by Congress members with shuttle contractors in their districts. Yes, the shuttles are old technology and the ISS has little resemblance to its original intention. But there are international agreements here and huge cancellation fees in many cases. For financial and political purposes, there's very little choice here but to finish the ISS, and this relies heavily on the shuttles. To top it off, they are bound to the Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommendations for shuttle flight safety, hence the large costs in getting the shuttles and flights to meet these standards and extension of schedules to meet ISS commitments.

There is a plan to retire the shuttles and still support ISS, but it's not like they can do that tomorrow. It takes years of development which IS going on right now.

As far as the Moon and Mars, manned missions versus probes and robotics, science, and deflecting asteroids and comets, there are quite polar opposite opinions out there. The article argues one case, but the author doesn't indicate why the priorities he suggests are more important than other priorities. When he "boils down" the net worth of NASA Life Science research to "billions of dollars spent for astronauts to take each other's blood pressure", it's clear this guy is not the least bit objective or knowledgeable about what NASA actually does. This is the opinion of a "couch" space expert, which is about what his interest in manned exploration amounts to -- sitting on the couch. NASA was created essentially for manned space flight. Some people are content to stay here and let robots do all the space work. Would North American society exist today if that was the extend of the exploration will in Europe 500 years ago? (Exploration which was, by the way, largely driven with interests in financial spin-offs.)

Does NASA, or Congress, have its priorities straight? Perhaps, perhaps not. Much of it is a matter of opinion. Much of it is a matter of existing commitments. Much of it is drvien by economic considerations. But in any case, this article is one of the worst analyses of the subject I've seen.

Re:I mostly agree

[Mayhem178]

Let's not forget that the escape velocity from the moon is minimalistic compared to that of the old mud ball. It wouldn't surprise me if, in a few decades, most manned spaceflight (American, at the very least, if not others) originates from the moon. Of course, this is all still just speculation. They still need an efficient means of getting the fuel for the spacecraft from Earth to the moon, otherwise the only thing they're really gaining is distance. Still, I'll bet that one Earth-to-moon flight carrying fuel would power more than one launch from the moon, though. Any positive gain is good positive gain, I guess.

Re:I mostly agree

[terrymr]

FYI the moon is not tidally locked and your telescope would only be usable about 1/3 -1/2 of the time, this is the same reason why you'd need 3 beaming stations for lunar based solar power.

huh ? If you mean the same side of the moon isn't always turned toward the earth then i think you're wrong on that point.

Re:I mostly agree

[ahodgson]

Use of nuclear engines should be a lot more palatable on the Moon, too.

Re:I mostly agree

[pixelpusher220]

Except that we have found one that might do just that within about 40 years. Pretty slim timescale to 'fix' the problem isn't it?

Search Google for 'asteroid collision 2029' and you'll see many links about it. They've pretty much ruled out a collision on 2029 itself, but the thinking is that it will pass so close that it will alter the asteroids orbit. And then it's an every 5-6 year close pass to worry about.

Re:I mostly agree

[Bob3141592]

There is one good reason to build a Moonbase: Telescopes on the far side of the Moon are as insulated as you can get from interference from human sources. A good set of telescopes, in all spectrums, on the far side of the Moon should be an eventual goal of NASA. (Not that we need people there to run them...)

I mostly disagree with the above statement. Optical telescopes can work just as well on satellites than on the moon -- even better in a zero-g environment so there's no mirror flexure. But an array of large radio telescopes would be well suited for lunar deploymant, since the far side is shielded from pervasive terrestrial interference.

Re:I mostly agree

[belg4mit]

Sorry, yes your right of course. Brain fart. What I was thinking of was lunar face exposure to the sun as it orbits, so you'd still have the same issues (and in any event you'd need some sort of relay to get your data back to Earth).

Re:I mostly agree

[belg4mit]

s/your/you're/; s/it/the moon/;

Re:I mostly agree

[dyslexicbunny]

Additionally I am not sure about the moonbase, until we get a definitive answer on the question of if water exists on the moon I don't see the point in building a base there

One of the biggest reasons NASA wants to build a moonbase is to test the technologies that would enable the building and sustainment of a Mars facility. Even though Mars isn't a high priority for the CEV, the plan is to carry over much of the components from the ISS component to the Mars mission.

NASA has thought out the CEV system. They know they fucked Uncle Sam hard in the 70s with the shuttle and are trying to make up for it. They are failing back on 60s tech because it is proven and manufacturing it will be significantly less.

However, if I had a say as to where more of NASA's money should go, I would put it in Aeronautics. If you subscribe to global warming (I'm not interested in starting a debate), you would consider that the way too many flights a day in the world contribute far more greatly to CO2 and NOx emissions than the automobile industry. Reducing various problems that still plague us there, combined with funding life science and Earth-related projects, should be of greater importance to NASA.

Re:I mostly agree

[Mayhem178]

"Sir, are you suggesting that we nuke the moon?"

"Would ya miss it? Would ya?"

Re:I mostly agree

[purfledspruce]

Hydrogen mined from the Moon is useless and economically stupid. It costs $133,000 to put a kilogram of hydrogen on the Moon. It would cost in excess of $5 BILLION to build a hydrogen processing plant (remember, it would have to go into a shadowed crater, autonomously, in a 40 kelvin environment, and process the regolith that contains hydrogen, expelling the waste, without ever being serviced or given maintenance) and about $5 BILLION to build the power system (nuclear fission plant) that would enable it to go into that environment and operate a processing plant...and we don't even know if the hydrogen on the Moon is in large amounts, or close enough to the surface to be useful...and sending a robot into that environment to find out if it exists in sufficient amounts would probably cost about $2 BILLION dollars.

So, what we have to ask ourselves is, how much hydrogen can we put on the Moon for $12B? At $133,000 per kg, that's over 90,000 kg...and all we can use hydrogen for is to make rocket fuel.

What makes a lot more sense, though is to mine oxygen from the regolith. Regolith is everywhere, it's approximately 40% oxyen by weight, and it can be used for either rocket fuel or for environmental control/life support systems. Oxygen also accounts for about 5/6ths of the weight of hydrogen/oxygen fuel, so it's a real bang-for-the-buck sort of material to mine.

Re:I mostly agree

[Moofie]

"Still, I'll bet that one Earth-to-moon flight carrying fuel would power more than one launch from the moon, though."

I'll take that bet. How much you want to put up? Shall we use your orbital mechanics text, or mine?

Re:I mostly agree

[hey!]

I think the moon base and Mars belong on the long term plan. Part of that plan will be maintaining and upgrading our manned space flight capability, extending our unmanned capabilities, and developing new technolgies that increase the cost effectiveness of pursing our space exploration goals. I am satisfied to make steady progress towards these goals, even if, being middle aged, I might not live to see an astronaut planting an American flag on Mars. In terms of the the role that space exploration plays in the destiny of Humanity, it doesn't make much difference if this is done in my generation or my grandchildren's.

The environmental missions are different. They need to be on both the short term agenda, because they bear on immediate and permanently ongoing policy concerns. To put it on a bumper sticker, Mars will still be there for our grandchildren. The Earth as we know it may not.

It is possible that these concerns should be split into two agencies; a space exploration/technology agency (like the NASA of the early 60s), and an enviornmental research agency which uses mature space technologies developd by the other agency.

Re:I mostly agree

[zippthorne]

The relay issue is solved. A halo orbit about L2 requires very little propellant to maintain and would provide a clear view of both the telescope and an earthly ground station 24 hours a day.

We know how to do communications satellites, and we know how to do halo orbits (SOHO is a very good example), there's no new technology there (well electric propulsion would make the propellant last longer, but by the time we build anything, that won't be anywhere near novel.

But.. while the telescope is directly facing the sun, you still have an opportunity: unobstructed radio observation of the sun itself!

Re:I mostly agree

[crymeph0]

It seems to me that most people deep down either don't care about manned flight or don't understand the resources necessary to keep the USA at the forefront of manned flight. If you personally believe that robot science is more important than manned flight, just say so, but don't pay lip service to the idea of keeping the USA at the head of the pack in manned flight and then demand that NASA divert resources from creating the next generation of manned flight into robotic exploration. The fact is, manned flight has stagnated since Apollo. Nobody can deny this. If manned flight means *ANYTHING* to you, it has to be expanded beyond LEO. This will take a lot of money. NASA is barely getting a cost of living increase, and the extra money to develop the next generation of manned flight has to come from somewhere. If we constantly put expanding our manned flight program on the back burner so we can adequately fund all the robotic exploration we want to do, the next generation of manned vehicles will look disturbingly similar to the current generation, and by that I mean people will die on a poorly designed spaceship that doesn't do anything it was envisioned to do. Again. In conclusion, if you believe in manned flight and robotic exploration at the same time, NASA must have a funding increase. If you believe in manned flight by NASA at all, but don't want to give NASA a budget increase, manned flight must take the priority for the next few years. If you don't believe NASA should be doing manned flight, at least you're honest, even though I disagree with you.

Re:I mostly agree

[Stripe7]

A moonbase Telescope would be real science, so it won't be built.

Re:I mostly agree

[sremick]

I am a hardcore geek. Been one all my life. I love space, science, technology, all that stuff.

However, I have gotten to the point of being willing to give up a year (or more) of space-exploration if it meant that same $13 billion/yr budget could be pointed at earth, addressing things like global warming, pollution, deforestation, human-rights violations, overpopulation, etc.

Do we have our eyes so glued to the telescopes looking at places we probably never will get to visit that we don't notice the ground crumbling around our feet? Or are we so dead-set at pissing in our own pool that instead of cleaning it up we'll blow money on getting to the moon so we can watch it rot as a result of our own negligence from a safe distance?

To keep things in-perspective, while we might be giving NASA $13 billion a year, we have this little war in Iraq which eats that up in about 2 months (and I'm not pulling that number out of my ass). I think that maybe anyone who is concerned that NASA's priorities are in-order should maybe take a step back and wonder if, by bitching about NASA while turning a blind-eye to bigger issues, if they themselves have their OWN priorities of what to complain about in-order.

Re:I mostly agree

[Red Flayer]

"The only other reason for a base on the Moon is turism"

And how is a telescope on the far side of the moon going to help determine whether we're speaking to a bot or not?

Re:I mostly agree

[Mayhem178]

Yours. What do you come up with? Would there be any gain at all?

Re:I mostly agree

[mbrother]

But primarily just in the optical part of the spectrum at ridiculous levels. The Earth is brighter at radio wavelengths, for instance. It's also important to realize that from the moon you could use telescopes in the lunar daytime since there is no atmosphere to scatter the sunlight, as long as you didn't look very close to the sun (basically same limitation as with space telescopes like Hubble).

Re:I mostly agree

[Stephan Schulz]

FYI the moon is not tidally locked and your telescope would only be usable about 1/3 -1/2 of the time, this is the same reason why you'd need 3 beaming stations for lunar based solar power.

Of course the moon is tidally locked to the Earth. Earth is not (yet) locked to the moon. But the far side of the moon is named for a reason.

A telescope still would have to deal with the sun, though. At lunar night, there should be no problem at all (no significant scattering without a real atmosphere). During lunar day, the question is how close to the sun you can point the telescope and still get good images (and avoid damage to the optics and sensors in the worst case).

Re:I mostly agree

[Moofie]

You can see my math when I see your money, amigo.

Just a hint: The delta vee to take off from earth, land on the moon, take off from the moon, and go elsewhere in the solar system is rather higher than the delta vee to just take off from earth and go elsewhere in the solar system.

Until there's spacefaring industry on the moon itself (working with indigenous resources), the moon is not a useful space base.

There's an argument to be made for on-orbit assembly, but I think not a terribly strong one. Systems integration is hard, and doing things in orbit is really hard.

"The Case for Mars" by Robert Zubrin talks about this in some detail. Good book.

Re:I mostly agree

[Stephan Schulz]

Ask scientists how long life on earth has been around... and they will probably answer, "Millions of years!".

Well, I hope they will answer "Billions of years". It's been several hundreds of millions since the Cambrian explosion (and 65 million years since a big one wiped out the dinosaurs).

Re:I mostly agree

[Mayhem178]

I stand corrected. Nevertheless, there's no sense in being a jerk about it. A simple, "No, here's why..." would have sufficed.

Re:I mostly agree

[irablum]

If you love science and space technology, then you should support NASA and Manned space flight.

The problem with our government budget is that it is relatively sedentary. If you get $1 billion this year, you'll probably get $1 billion next year, though you might get $1.1 billion or $0.9 billion. Programs don't get skipped from year to year. they are either funded, or cut.

The US Federal budget for 2006 has as its top 4 Net Outlays the following:

1) Department of Health and Human Services, $641 billion
2) Social Security Administration, $592 billion
3) Department of Defense - Military, $512 billion
4) Department of the Treasury, $452 billion.

The next few:
5) Department of Agriculture, $96 billion
6) Department of Education, $84 billion
7) Department of Veterans Affairs, $70 billion
8) Department of Homeland Security, $67 billion
9) Office of Personnel Management, $63 billion
10) Department of Transportation, $61 billion
11) Department of Labor, $51 billion
12) Department of Housing and Urban Development, $47 billion
13) Other Defense Civil Programs, $46 billion

Then the relatively smaller stuff ($10 - 25 billion)
14) Department of Justice, $22 billion
15) Department of Energy, $22 billion
16) International Assistance Programs, $16 billion
17) NASA, $16 billion
18) Department of State, $14 billion
19) Other independent Agencies, $13 billion

And the rest:
20) Department of the Interior, $9 billion
21) EPA, $8 billion
22) Corps of Engineers, $7 billion
23) Executive Office of the President, $7 billion
24) Department of Commerce, $6 billion
25) Judicial Branch, $6 billion
26) NSF, $6 billion
27) Railroad Retirement Board, $5 billion
28) Legislative Branch, $4 billion
29) Postal Service, $1.5 billion (note that this is their net loss for the year)
30) Small Business Administration, $1.2 billion
31) GSA $0.4 billion

lastly there are those 2 branches which Make money:
32) FDIC, $-0.9 billion
33) Export-Import Bank, $-1.8 billion

Now, these are all 2006 figures, and though most will be the same next year, there are some cuts for 2007:
$3 billion in agriculture, $8 billion in Military, $23 billion to DHS (33% of the total budget), and others. NASA is looking at a modest rais of $800 million, and NSF will get an additional $70 million.

Now that the facts are out of the way, on to my opinions.
In my opinion there is a huge problem in our federal budget. 1) WAY too much spending in places like the Department of Agriculture, HUD, Education, and Health and Human Services. 2) WAY WAY too little spending by the NSF. 3) International Assistance Program budget should be controlled by the State Department. (Damnit, we have diplomats, we should be using them to give out goodies to other countries.)

The reason, (IMNSHO) that the NSF is traditionally underfunded is because it gives money out for science that isn't "Politically Correct". Its far easier to build more bombers or dump more into Healthcare or FBI Agents than it is to allow funding for Cosmolagical research into the Big Bang, or Stem cell research, or even Cancer research or AIDS research. No one loses a campaign on "We hired 20,000 teachers". But you can on "We funded research into the effects of school prayer on laboratory rats."

anyway....

one more thing: The goverment took in the following in 2005:

Individual Income taxes: $927 billion
Corporate Income Taxes: $278 billion
Social Security Insurance: $217 billion (on budget)
Excise Taxes: $73 billion
Estate Taxes: $25 billion
Customs Duties: $23 billion
Other recipts: $33 billion

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/06feb20061 000/www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy07/pdf/spec.pdf

Thats it

Ira

Re:I mostly agree

[bobdinkel]

I gotta say that building anything on the far side of the moon is an *awesome* idea. Just think about that for a second. Imagine yourself saying, "they built it... on the far side of the moon". Outstanding.

And can you imagine how entertaining talk radio will become after that? Like Coast to Coast AM wasn't nutso enough? Government funding to build something on the far side of the moon would make their tinfoil covered heads explode. And that, my friends, is reason enough to do it.

Re:I mostly agree

[Moofie]

I was making a joke. You can get your nose out of joint all you want. Whatever makes you happy.

Re:I mostly agree

[SnowZero]

Just a hint: The delta vee to take off from earth, land on the moon, take off from the moon, and go elsewhere in the solar system is rather higher than the delta vee to just take off from earth and go elsewhere in the solar system.

Who said the OP was talking about multiple launches to mars? They only claimed that one flight from the moon could support multiple flights (of some type) from the moon. It is just as reasonable to assume they were talking about orbital flights from the respective bodies.

Given that, the formulation you hint at neglects the reusability of a moon-based spacecraft. That's a big issue on the moon, as the ratio of the mass of the spacecraft to the mass of fuel required to reach orbit is vastly different from earth (I'm sure you know this, but others may need to be reminded).

So, assuming a long-term reusable spacecraft has been landed on the moon (we'd only need to do that once), you're betting that launching the equivalent weight in fuel and landing it on the moon is not enough to reach lunar orbit more than once. If you had enough fuel to do any more than that, say 1.1 launches, then the OP is correct.

Now, I don't know the actual answer, but I bet its a lot closer than if you simply treat the moon as one-time detour for a spacecraft on its way somewhere else. If you aren't returning to the moon, it obviously doesn't make sense to stop there as you point out.

Until there's spacefaring industry on the moon itself (working with indigenous resources), the moon is not a useful space base.

Until we build a base there, we can't put a spacefaring industry there. That's why its so important to look for ways to use the moon's resources, and put it to the test with a "useless" (for now anyway) moon base.

There's also the issue of figuring out how to live in space for long periods. A 2-year mars mission would be suicide unless we'd built up and tested our systems on an easier problem (a moon base would be perfect for this). After all, there's a reason we had the Mercury and Gemini programs before Apollo. We didn't just build the moon mission from scratch.

Re:I mostly agree

[Moofie]

Who said the OP was talking about multiple launches to mars?

Um, it looks to me like you did. I'm not talking about Mars specifically, although Mars is definitely "elsewhere". I suggest that the asteroid belt would be a pretty good place to check out.

They only claimed that one flight from the moon could support multiple flights (of some type) from the moon. It is just as reasonable to assume they were talking about orbital flights from the respective bodies.

OK, one massive massive massive flight of fuel to the moon would indeed support many moon-to-lunar-orbit flights. So what? There's nothing of particular interest on the moon, and even less in Lunar orbit. Is there interesting stuff to do on the moon? Sure. Heavy industry ain't it.

Given that, the formulation you hint at neglects the reusability of a moon-based spacecraft.

Yes it does, since we don't have good examples of such objects. In the future, things will indeed be different.

That's a big issue on the moon, as the ratio of the mass of the spacecraft to the mass of fuel required to reach orbit is vastly different from earth (I'm sure you know this, but others may need to be reminded).

*eyebrow* Yeah. The obviosity is pretty staggering.

So, assuming a long-term reusable spacecraft has been landed on the moon (we'd only need to do that once), you're betting that launching the equivalent weight in fuel and landing it on the moon is not enough to reach lunar orbit more than once. If you had enough fuel to do any more than that, say 1.1 launches, then the OP is correct.

But, again, WHO CARES about lunar orbit? I was indeed assuming that we wanted to go to interesting places in the Solar System. If we want to go somewhere boring, it's a lot cheaper to go to my home town.

Now, I don't know the actual answer, but I bet its a lot closer than if you simply treat the moon as one-time detour for a spacecraft on its way somewhere else. If you aren't returning to the moon, it obviously doesn't make sense to stop there as you point out.

Again: I contend that the moon is not a useful place to go. There are indeed good scientific reasons to go to the moon, but no industrial, economic, or exploratory ones. I'm certainly not discounting the value of the science, but I don't think it's the most important objective. (It's also one of the less expensive objectives, which is cool indeed.)

Until we build a base there, we can't put a spacefaring industry there. That's why its so important to look for ways to use the moon's resources, and put it to the test with a "useless" (for now anyway) moon base.

What resources are those? Yes, fine, HE3. Get back to me when we've got a reliable fusion reactor.

There's also the issue of figuring out how to live in space for long periods.

That problem is well understood.

A 2-year mars mission would be suicide unless we'd built up and tested our systems on an easier problem (a moon base would be perfect for this).

I think that's a silly contention. Risky? Yes. Most valuable enterprises are. Suicidal? Come on.

After all, there's a reason we had the Mercury and Gemini programs before Apollo. We didn't just build the moon mission from scratch.

But, having built the moon mission, building another moon mission is not useful. We've learned those lessons. Time to take the next step.

Re:I mostly agree

[rtb61]

It is quite clear the person who did the article has no idea why small steps need to be made to develop skills and technology to achieve greater objectives. They are stuck in the concept that somehow you can leap from 1960's rockets all the way to sci-fi space ships, without all the work and development in between.

Although some parts are correct in the need to drive the public immagination in order to secure better funding, currently that is not the major driver of US funding (the current driver is who gets the profits). Just a rough spot to work through.

NASA should quitely promote and assist the chinese space program as that will get those competitive political ideologies going again ;), or at least come up with a way of convincing the creationists that there is a worth while religous objective is space (ready for your next bible thumping public relations "er" ex-spurt). Why else would God put space up there except to get us to reach for it, it's a religous thing, of holy significance ;).

Re:I mostly agree

[Audacious]

Let me first say that I have worked at NASA since about 1986. So I've watched and been a part of what has gone on at NASA for quite a while.

NASA, when it switched to the Space Shuttle, missed the boat. This is not to say that it is not doing great things; because it is doing great things. But when the Space Shuttle was first proposed, all those many years ago, there were many people against it yet it became a reality anyway. Why?

1. Speed. NASA wanted a faster way to get people into orbit so they could speed things up. The Space Shuttle was thought to do just that. You set it up, you launch it, you get into space several people at once, and then it lands, and you repeat the process as quickly as you can.

2. Cost. The Space Shuttle was pitched to the people of the United States that it would cost a lot of money up front to create the Space Shuttle but that after they were built it would cost less than the rocket launches to send up the Space Shuttle. Obviously at (if I remember correctly) $3 Billion dollars a whack - the Space Shuttle costs a lot more than if we just sent up rockets. Rocket launches cost about $500 Million dollars a launch (again, if I remember correctly).

There were other reasons also. The people of the United States were high on StarTrek, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, and others. The general feeling was that if you went into space you could zoom around like crazy, do wild and crazy things, and be heros. The reality is - it is no where near that easy to dock one vehicle with another when every single thing has the potential to make you go spinning off into who knows where. Further, when you are travelling at extremely high velocities - even a flake of paint can kill. (As an example, on one of the missions the Space Shuttle returned to ear with a hole in one of the front windows. The hole reached about 3/4 of the way through the protective glass. Had the fragment been bigger it would have punched a hole in the window which would most probably have caused the window to shatter thus sucking all of the astronauts into space and death. This, of course, never made it to TV but I tell you about it here because I was working at NASA when it happened.)

To get back on track though - why the Space Shuttle and not rockets? Money. People need work. Rockets were a done deal. We knew how to build them. We knew what they could and could not do. We needed something else to carry NASA forwards. Thus, the Space Shuttle. It provided thousands of new jobs, created the need for hundreds if not thousands of different research projects, and made it so people could dream of a day when maybe they would be able to ride a Space Shuttle into orbit like a vacation dream. The important thing was though - is that it gave hundreds of thousands of people work to do, helped us to move forwards technologically, and brought the world together. (After all, the arm is made by Canada, parts of the Space Station are made by the various countries as well as some of the parts on the Space Shuttle itself are from other countries.)

Whereas the biggest thing that came out of the rocket era was Tang, the Space Shuttle has given us new beds, toothpaste, nutrient bars, ways to increase bone mass (because bone mass is lost if extended periods in space happen), better and faster computers, and a myraid array of other inventions. So that is the good side of things. The bad side is though - that having the government run the space agency is like trying to drive a bus with a steering wheel for each person on the bus. All of them are trying to make the bus go in a certain direction. Sometimes forwards, but usually at a slight angle. So when the bus hits the curb - everyone on the bus screams at everyone else saying it is their fault for the problem when, in reality, it is everyone's fault.

So yeah, maybe NASA doesn't have its priorities straight. But it is only because there are so many people trying to make NASA do something that a project gets started, then stopped, th

Re:I mostly agree

[perfessor multigeek]

Actually, no, they *lose* distance since the number of efficient trajectories to Mars, IIRC, goes down. On the other hand an automated station on the moon that extracted water and minerals and boosted that up to a Lagrange point would certainly be muy choice.

btw, no biggie, but you might want to check the definition of "minimalistic". I strongly suspect that you meant "minimal". Gotta watch the tendency to add extra syllawobbles.

Waiting to buy my ticket on RutanAir, fantasizing about tickets on ReseuneAir,

-Rustin

Re:I mostly agree

[rufty_tufty]

What 60s tech is going into the CEV program? As far as I can see, it's either re-using shuttle tech, or it's new tech (the methane rockets)
Or do you mean it looks similar to the 60s stuff?

By that logic, the Atlas, Delta and let's face it, everything but the shuttle is 60s tech.
Or have I misunderstood your assertion here?

Re:I mostly agree

[dyslexicbunny]

Yea. I mistyped some of it after looking back at it. I meant 60's concepts like the Saturn 5, which is pretty much what you cleaned up for me. It's been almost a year since I've followed any of it but I was familar a lot of the Exploration Systems Architecture Study conducted last year.

Considering a lot of the stuff I saw was preliminary, God only knows what has changed.

That's what happens with tax-funded entities

[the_humeister]

I'm not surprised, although I think they still manage to be more fiscally responsible and sensible than the rest of the US government as a whole. Barring the money sink that is the space shuttle and international space station (why do we still need this? Oh yeah, politics), they've had really successful projects. Just take the recent Mars rovers for a high-profile example.

Re:That's what happens with tax-funded entities

[iminplaya]

A tax funded entity is what kept my power on for over three whole years without a single outage. My old Seth Thomas clock verified it. A tax funded entity kept the water for much longer without fail. A tax funded entity made it possible for me to go to work without the need for an automobile for 15 years, also without fail. A tax funded entity delivers an enormous volume of mail at a much lower price than any private one ever could. Tax funded entities are the only kind that actually has to respond to the people who vote and pay for it. So I can say from experience that not all tax funded entities are bad. A teeny bit of socialism goes a long way towards making life a lot more pleasent. I would trust a tax funded entity to maintain the national infrastructure of transportation, communication, power, and water far more than any private company. And I sure don't want to see a private military or police that answers only to shareholders, despite all the faults of the gov't one. It's tax funded regulation that keeps the privates honest. If tax funded entities are failing us, then it's up to us to use the power of the vote of fix it. And, as you noted, NASA is not a complete failure.

Re:That's what happens with tax-funded entities

[EndlessNameless]

A small nitpick...

The USPS is not a tax-funded entity in the traditional sense. They do not receive a standard opertaing budget from the GAO. The postal service is entirely self-funded. While I believe the federal government would (and maybe already has) step in to bail the USPS out if a nasty surprise caught them blindside, the USPS was set up with the precept that it would be financially independent. (Blame Ben Franklin for that rather sound idea.)

Re:That's what happens with tax-funded entities

[bobdinkel]

So are you advocating a private space program? Or a goverment space program that isn't tax-funded? Or no space program? Or were you just lamenting that this is just the way goes? I'm curious

And just to play the devil's advocate...
What got the US to the moon? Oh yeah, politics.

Money

[stlhawkeye]

People see shuttle launches on TV. And most will, at least, not protest the money being spent. But they might get pissy about billions vanishing into a black hole of government science whose results they cannot watch on TV. NASA's prioritization is, at least to some small degree, a slave to public opinion. Yet another reason why privitization of the emerging space industries will be helpful. Then, at least, informed people with money can set priorities as opposed to politicians who just want to get elected.

Re:Money

[hyfe]

Then, at least, informed people with money can set priorities as opposed to politicians who just want to get elected.

If you have to resort to corporations, who almost by definition are out to make money short-term, instead of politicians, who are there to build a better society long-term (that's why you voted for'em right? right?) there is something seriously, seriously wrong with your society.

Re:Money

[Alinabi]

Informed people with enough money to back something of this magnitude are as hard to find as any other type of mythical creature.

Re:Money

[saifatlast]

If you have to resort to corporations, who almost by definition are out to make money short-term, instead of politicians, who are there to build a better society long-term

Wait, aren't politicians there to get re-elected?

(that's why you voted for'em right? right?) there is something seriously, seriously wrong with your society.

For one thing, I didn't vote for them (at least not the ones who represent me) but more importantly, if I don't agree with any of the candidates, it's either not vote or vote for the best one. Neither of those choices will change anything. What's so great about your society?

Re:Money

[stlhawkeye]

If you have to resort to corporations, who almost by definition are out to make money short-term, instead of politicians, who are there to build a better society long-term (that's why you voted for'em right? right?) there is something seriously, seriously wrong with your society.

There's no difference between a politician and a corporation in the United States, except this: politicians pass legislation based on the impulsive instincts of their voters, no matter how malinformed, misguided, bigoted, or wrongheaded. Corporations are ultimately accountable to people who have a long-term vested interest in its managers making good decisions. I trust corporations with my money far more than any politician. Corporations take my money and try to turn it into MORE money. Politicians take it and try to hand it out to people who produce nothing.

Re:Money

[topical_surfactant]

I don't know about that - there was some pretty impressive public support after the two Mars Exploration Rovers started to return a host of spectacular images and science data.

The issue is more centered around what the public finds scientifically interesting. Probably the hottest topic right now is life elsewhere - in and out of our solar system. There's no money in it for the private sector to cover this kind of research, but there is a large public interest in the outcome of exploration that would lead to the discovery of non-terrestrial life forms.

Re:Money

[geekoid]

Insulted all voters, and totally missed what is going on in corporate america in the last 20 years. Well done.

Re:Money

[stlhawkeye]

Insulted all voters, and totally missed what is going on in corporate america in the last 20 years. Well done.

I did no such thing. Voters can and do react to things out of biggotry and fear. That's a fact, not an insult. Politicians respond to voter sentiment, whether it's right or wrong, because they live and die by, not positive results that give us a better America, but their next election campaign. So when the voters turn out in mass on a given issue, whether they're on the right side or the wrong side, whether they're acting out of righteous indignation over an injustice or wrongheaded biggotry, the politicians can have their strings pulled.

The other side is the election itself and the amount of involvement that corporate interests have in political elections. This is why I say that there's no difference between them and corporations, except the corporation doesn't also have the stigma of an election. As long as it generates revenue, it continues. Politicians have to generate revenue and satisfy a fickle block of individuals who share only one thing in common: they live near each other. With district manipulation, House districts often share far more in common, but those seats aren't really competitive and those reps don't really have to respond to the voters, their careers are completely secure.

As to what is "going on in corporate america" for the last 20 years that I've missed, you'll have to be more detailed if you expect any kind of real response. Or maybe you just like insulting people without having to provide any specific logic or argumentation for your victims to respond to. Well done. You should look into running for office!

Re:Money

[Jookey]

A politicians objective is to get re-elected and leave a good legacy. A company's objective is to make money. A coreration would kill people if it made them more money and a politician would if it got him re-elected. Fourtunatly we have laws that make killing people unprofitable(in most cases) and we have a general populace that does not support a killing people agenda. Both government and corperations are better at doing certain things. A corperatin can figure out a way to manufacture a microwave for less than $50. I'd like to see a government manage a factory that effectivly. But try and find me a corperation that cand make a profit from feeding poor people.

What NASA Stands For

[mkoenecke]

Thank goodness the folks at Slate have a better understanding of NASA's purpose than I do: I have a hard time figuring out where "environmental and climate research" is derived fomr "the National Aeuronautics and Space Administration." But then again, I've always been bad at figuring out acronyms.

Re:What NASA Stands For

[MrFlibbs]

The reason NASA does environmental and climate research is to please a voting constituent that would otherwise be opposed to space research. The green crowd will support the NASA budget if some of the dollars go towards projects they find agreeable. If all the money was spent on deep space probes, there would instead be cries for redirecting the NASA budget elsewhere.

BTW, the funding for the shuttle was partially justified in the same manner. Some of the claimed benefits of the shuttle program were to make long term weather forecasts, monitor size and health of rain forests and deserts, and search for mineral desposits non-destructively.

Unfortunately, NASA really has no choice in this. If they don't play as many political games as possible, their budget won't survive. The general public isn't keen on funding pure research, at least not to the levels NASA requires.

Re:What NASA Stands For

[mkoenecke]

Oh, I understand the politics involved. I just thought the point of view expressed in the Slate article was interesting: i.e., that environmental and climate research should be NASA's #1 priority. Heck, if the funding criterion is whether there is any *direct* cost-benefit, NASA should just be disbanded entirely. As should all governmental research funding. Not that I think that would be a very smart move.

Re:What NASA Stands For

[tarogue]

It's in the word "Aeuronautics"

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[gEvil (beta)]

So, is finding aliens, a la Alien, sexy?

Re:Budget woes?

[Forrest Kyle]

You seem to be [i]really[/i] fascinated with probes. Freud would have a field day. Then again, sometimes a probe is just a probe.

Re:Budget woes?

[stlhawkeye]

Budget woes? Budget woes?? NASA has what, 13 BILLION dollars? Roll that number around in your head -- THIRTEEN BILLION DOLLARS. Per year. EVERY YEAR.

And a huge chunk of it is spent on bureaucractic bullshit. Paying admistrators, and their secretaries, and their benefits, and their health insurance, and remimbursing transportation costs, and federal audits, and enviromental impact surveys, and nasa.gov, and PR, and ...

Another chunk of it goes into funding existing missions. We STILL have to keep paying for Voyager if we want anybody listening to it. For every probe that's out there, we have to pay for the earthbound hardware that listens to and talks to it, the talent that knows how it works and can troubleshoot problems, and the scientists on the publi dole who analyze what we get back.

That leaves some money leftover for NEW missions. Some that money goes into paying private contractors to build parts, some goes into research into new technology, some goes into upgrading and maintaining he shuttle fleet, some goes into the ISS. Some goes to foreign governments. Russia doesn't launch our astronauts for free.

How many probes could we launch with all that money? We could have probes flying all over the solar system. We could have fundamental research into remote robotics.

I imagine that with $13 billion we could launch thousands. There'd be no money leftover for building the ones we launch next year, though. Or paying for the crews to maintain the ones we launched last year.

There is no reason that through mass production, NASA couldn't be launching thousands of probes a year. If you're launching that many, they don't have to perfect. Launch 10 of them at every target, hoping five will end up working.

Sure there is. A probe costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Even at a mere $100 million, $13 billion is enough to build only 130 probes, to say nothing of paying for launch, maintainance, and scientific analysis.

NASA needs to completely change their culture and use some intelligence for a change.

I suggest that it is your intelligence, in this case, that needs some looking into.

Congress controls their budget

[gr8_phk]

The US congress controls NASAs budget. No, they don't just tell them how much money they're going to get. They have control down to the line items. Shuttle boosters and whatnot are made in certain peoples home states and you'll have a really hard time reallocating that money, even if the folks at NASA want to do so from top to bottom.

Here's an experiment: Find out what state NASAs big dollar items come from. Then look at who is on the committe that controls the NASA budget and what state they are from. Look for correlations. After that, we can talk about priorities at NASA.

Re:Congress controls their budget

[Anonymous Coward]

gr8

  Here is the first part of the experiment you suggested. It turns out that the appropriations committee that handles Nasa's budget has experience some serious changes this year and as such we may see so new "spending" habits with future budgets, who knows. However, the individuals that currently sit on the appropriations committee responsible for NASA as of March 2006 is as follows:

Link to committee membership source
http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/0323_US_Congres s_Reorganizes_Committees_to.html

Link to Nasa Budget
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/AN_Budget_04_deta il.html

Nasa Appropriation Committees

Senate Committee on Appropriations
Full Committee:
Thad Cochran (R-MS) Chair,
Robert Byrd (D-WV) Ranking

Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science:
  Richard Shelby (R-AL) Chair,
  Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) Ranking

House Appropriations Committee
Full Committee:
Jerry Lewis (R-CA) Chair,
David Obey (D-WI) Ranking

Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, and Commerce, and Related Agencies:
Frank Wolf (R-VA),
Alan Mollohan (D-WV) Ranking

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
Full Committee:
Ted Stevens (R-AK) Chair,
  Inouye (D-HI) Ranking
Subcommittee on Science and Space:
Kay Bailey-Hutchison (R-TX), Chair
Bill Nelson (D-FL) Ranking

House Committee on Science
Full Committee,
Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) Chair,
Bart Gordon (D-TN) Ranking

Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics:
Ken Calvert (R-CA), Chair -
Mark Udall (D-CO) Ranking

Nasa Budget:

See Link (PDF Warning)
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/AN_Budget_04_deta il.html

It's Marketing

[nightsweat]

If a bunch of engineers and hard scientists got together and decided how to spend NASA's budget most effectively, we'd see only automated missions. The data gathered would be wonderful, it would be efficient, and their budget would be cut in half the next year by Congress.

Manned exploration is the sizzle that sells the steak. You have to keep a manned program going to keep the short-attention-spanned taxpaying pinheads interested in space. If space is just drones and bots flying off to take soil samples and collect space dust, the money will get diverted to a subsidy to study how pet monkeys could be used to deliver nuclear warheads to a target or some other stupid Pentagon project.

Re:It's Marketing

[darkwing_bmf]

Manned exploration is the sizzle that sells the steak.

The sizzle is too expensive to justify the cost, even if the steak is really good. For budget sanity reasons, I'd prefer a totally unmanned space program. But even if losing the manned space program destroys NASA as a government agency, Universities and other research institutions can still launch space probes on comercial rockets, so it wouldn't be a total loss.

Re:It's Marketing

[roystgnr]

If a bunch of engineers and hard scientists got together and decided how to spend NASA's budget most effectively, we'd see only automated missions.

Speak for the hard scientists. If a bunch of engineers got together and decided how to spend NASA's budget next year, we'd see nothing but launch vehicle R&D. Trying to seriously explore the solar system with current vehicles is like trying to explore another continent via catapult.

What's more, we'd see a dozen different companies competing to create those new components, testbeds and launch vehicles, not just because that's how much money NASA's current budget takes up but because that's how you get a working product instead of an X-33. Engineers find it easier to choose between working prototypes than to choose between stacks of paper viewgraphs. It's more expensive in the short run, but the results usually turn out much better.

Re:It's Marketing

[bjk002]

"to take soil samples and collect space dust"

Ok, I agree, to an extent. But how many times do you need a damned rock to make some significant scientific statement.

I'm kinda tired of hearing:

Well, with this latest sample we discovered that there is definately dust on Mars.

Give me a break. You want probes? Fine. Give me some REAL answers with them.

Re:It's Marketing

[mbrother]

While I'd like to see manned efforts in space continue, the way it's currently happening is at the expense of space science.

I myself believe that the Hubble Space Telescope and similar missions have quite a bit of sizzle, too.

Re:It's Marketing

[nightsweat]

From your sig, I'd guess you have a slightly more sophisticated view than most of the national peanut gallery.

Re:It's Marketing

[iamlucky13]

NASA can't help you when they discover hemetite rich spherules on Mars which dramatically change predictions of how water may have affected Martian mineral deposits, and you can only interpret that as dust. And when you look at a Mossbauer spectrometer graph showing relative quantities of various minerals that confirm on a local scale the broader observations of an orbiter and decide that NASA's cameras have really bad resolution compared to your $200 point and shoot, NASA can't help you there, either.

But don't think that this is any argument against human spaceflight either. Both robotic and human exploration have value. If robots were ultimately the greatest way to do things, we wouldn't still do most work or inspect things here on earth by hand. And human spaceflight with the goal of expanding human horizons is no more vain, especially when we know what's out there, than sailing a ship no bigger than a semi-truck around the Cape Horn, or from Scandinavia to Newfoundland, or even a balsa raft into the south Pacific without really knowing where you were heading.

Re:It's Marketing

[Tablizer]

[Well, with this latest sample we discovered that there is definately dust on Mars.] Give me a break. You want probes? Fine. Give me some REAL answers with them.

The best way to do that is sample return missions, and unmanned sample return missions are far cheaper than manned ones, about 1/7th to 1/20th per rock.

Say what?!?

[A nonymous Coward]

Why spend all that time and treasure putting telescopes so far from humans and then spend even more time and treasure putting humans RIGHT NEXT to the damned things?

If you think having telescopes on the far side is good because it is out of the way of human pollution, then why for heaven's sake do you want to throw human pollution back into the mix as close as that?

The vibrations from human equipment, outgassing, dust raised ... sure, vibrations and dust are natural events there, but humans add more.

Good god almighty.

Robots would have to do 99.999% of the work anyway. What would humans add to either the construction or maintenance?

Re:Say what?!?

[maxume]

I think perhaps the moon is larger than you are imagining. Maybe.

As far as what humans add over robots, humans are still quite a bit more flexible than robots, especially in novel situations.

Re:Say what?!?

[Moofie]

How many objects you've ever seen are manufactured by autonomous robots?

How many complicated engineering projects have been built by tele-operated systems at the end of a long time lag?

Re:Say what?!?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

The vibrations from human equipment, outgassing, dust raised ... sure, vibrations and dust are natural events there, but humans add more.

You need humans to fix these things when they break. You also don't get that much vibration from humans a couple miles away, and you can't raise dust with no air.

Re:Say what?!?

[NadNad]

you can't raise dust with no air.

Say what, indeed! I guess that dust one sees in those newsreels of the moon landings and buggy-rides was there because some Hollywood effects hack didn't do his research. Just because there are no air currents to carry the dust around doesn't mean when you wipe moon dust off of a surface that it doesn't go flying in whatever direction you wiped it...

Re:Say what?!?

[fbjon]

Yes, it flies off and then falls back down to the ground like any other rock or object. No air means there is nothing to keep the dust floating, it just falls down.

Re:Say what?!?

[Enigma_Man]

and you can't raise dust with no air.

The guys that've been to the moon would disagree; the lunar dust was a huge problem, it would get into everything, including the pressure seals of the suits, where it would cause small leaks. You don't need air to throw dust around... that doesn't make sense.

-Jesse

Re:Say what?!?

[qeveren]

Lunar dust is -awful- stuff. It doesn't matter that there's no air or wind to waft the stuff around: it's constantly getting lifted from the surface by electrostatic levitation. It sticks to things persistently. And it's wretchedly abrasive. This isn't friendly fuzzy Earth dust we're talking about here, these are billions of tiny shards of sharp glass.

Moon dust sucks.

Re:Say what?!?

[b1t r0t]

Why spend all that time and treasure putting telescopes so far from humans and then spend even more time and treasure putting humans RIGHT NEXT to the damned things?

The telescopes would go on the far side of the moon. Why would tourists want to go there where there isn't the famous view of the earth?

But really, my question is why would they think of a moonbase as something to help us get to Mars? There may be less gravity on the moon, but it's still a gravity well that you have to come back out of. Put a damn station in L4 or L5 already.

Re:Say what?!?

[mbrother]

I read an article recently, and moondust also smells like gunpowder. No one so far has figured out why. Weird.

Re:Say what?!?

[TheKidWho]

Your absolutely right!!
Ive got a great proposal, lets replace all humans with robots!

Obviously the robot is better then you! You shouldn't be doing anything, let the robots do it. Why should you risk living? I mean fing a you have a 100% chance of dying!!! Too dangerous, do it with robots instead.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[Daniel_Staal]

So, is finding aliens, a la Alien, sexy?

No, but finding aliens, a la Species is.

NASA was never about science

[Anonymous Coward]

Nasa was never about science. It was about putting people on the moon. The science talk is just a nicer lofty goal that hides the real goal: making sure nobody gets control of the moon other than the US.

If you control the moon, you have a major military strategic advantage, the ultimate high ground. You can catapult anything down, anywhere on Earth and nobody can stop you. So NASA's highest priority is making sure nobody gets ahead of the US on this technology.

Science has always been secondary. That was true during Apollo, that's still true now.

Re:NASA was never about science

[Bob3141592]

Nasa was never about science. It was about putting people on the moon. The science talk is just a nicer lofty goal that hides the real goal: making sure nobody gets control of the moon other than the US.

If you control the moon, you have a major military strategic advantage, the ultimate high ground. You can catapult anything down, anywhere on Earth and nobody can stop you. So NASA's highest priority is making sure nobody gets ahead of the US on this technology.

The moon is not of high military value. Controlling near earth orbit is of much greater strategic value, since travel time to target is very short. Being able to deny your enemy access to geosynchronous orbit is worth something to the military. Until there are massive economic interests on the moon itself, the moon is irrelevant to the military.

Re:NASA was never about science

[BodhiCat]

If you control the moon, you have a major military strategic advantage, the ultimate high ground. You can catapult anything down, anywhere on Earth and nobody can stop you.

Except that they have three days and a clear radar view of the object while it heads towards earth to send up interceptors or evacuate a target population.

Intercontinental ballistic missles that reach their destination in 15 mins. to 1/2 and hour are much more effective and don't requre a big program to get them to their launch point.

how much did other nations pay into the ISS?

[epaulson]

One of the arguments given for completing the ISS is that other nations have contributed to it, and it would not be in good faith for the US to stop working on it.

How much for us to just buy them out? I suspect much less than the cost of completeing it.

Nothing to see here

[CXI]

While there are points to be made about how the shuttle is a bad choice for space flight and science isn't getting the funding that's needed, this author clearly doesn't understand all the benefits of manned space flight. I mean seriously, saying that the moon is only interesting to geology postdocs? That all people do in space is to take each other's blood pressure? He clearly lacks ANY knowledge of the science and innovations we gain by reaching new frontiers. One of his references is to a radical writer's article that thinks Apollo missions stopped off it orbit before going on to the moon and fails to understand the concepts of where to get fuel, where to stage equipment and where to practice somewhere relatively close by. Now, not only are blogs spewing crap but "news" sites are too.

Re:Nothing to see here

[wandazulu]

While I'm a space junkie (specifically Apollo) as much as the next /.'er, Apollo was primarily a political win with scientific and technological benefits.

That said, yes, the benefits of *getting there* were worth it, but I don't know of any value to the rocks brought back other than for, as the article puts it, geology postdocs.

I'm sure there would be more advances in science and technology in a moonbase and later a launchpad to Mars. The space fanboi in me says "sign me up!", but the realist (who I try to drown out as much as possible) looks at the haze in the sky, the 60 degree temps in January, and any recent picture of New Orleans and thinks that maybe we really should be trying to get our local house in order before opening branch offices.

I'm all for pushing the boundries, and I really want to think my kids or their kids might be able to kick back on a Mars beach, but I think I can speak for most of /. when I say that no one wants to use all that jim-dandy technology to get us to Mars because that's the planet of "last resort", to use the hurricane-related term.

Re:Nothing to see here

[roystgnr]

maybe we really should be trying to get our local house in order before opening branch offices

Our difficulties trying to get our local house in order are one of the reasons we need to look into opening branch offices. Hundreds of thousands of years of progress later, the life expectancy near Olduvai Gorge is still 45 years.

You are right that the benefits of Apollo involved politics, science, and technology (in rapidly descending order) and not colonization. That doesn't mean we need to give up on manned spaceflight, just that we need to look for more sustainable ways to accomplish it.

Priorities

[ChuckDivine]

One can easily argue our national priorities are considerably out of whack. Easterbrook argues there are better places to spend the money than the projects which have been proposed. He might be right. But it's easy to argue that the proposed projects do have value.

A moon base might not help Mars exploration. But a moon base can begin the process of using lunar resources to support both exploration and human needs on earth. There's more to space than scientific exploration.

The James Webb Space Telescope might focus on the distant universe and questions of esoteric value. Planet finding, on the other hand, will have little real impact on humanity as well, at least in the near future. Both projects do have worth, however.

Of greater interest to me is comparing NASA funding to other things our society does. Back in October the Washington Post proposed canceling Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, and cited the need for health care for poor children as a worthier alternative. What few people recognize is that health care spending in the U.S. is 100 times the NASA budget. Health care spending is also increasing annually at multiples of the NASA budget. If poor children aren't getting decent health care, that's the fault of the health care industry, not NASA.

NASA, while far from perfect, does appear to be struggling to improve and is making some progress towards that end. It would be nice if other American activities -- for example education -- showed the same kind of work at improvement.

Re:Priorities

[oh_my_080980980]

"One can easily argue our national priorities are considerably out of whack"

What is the relevance of this statement? The topic of dicussion is NASA's budget. It sounds like you are apologizing for NASA.

"But it's easy to argue that the proposed projects do have value."

Bingo, you are apologizing for NASA.

"NASA, while far from perfect, does appear to be struggling to improve and is making some progress towards that end."

WTF! Can you site evidence of this? Wasn't that the whole point of the article, assuming you read it in the first place. Let me refresh your memory, "NASA's new budget blows it." Hmm...kind of sounds like NASA is NOT making progress. The article goes on to illustrate examples of wasteful spending, e.g., the moon base project. He also gives evidence of what the costs would be and why a moon base would not help a mars mission.

Where's the progress again?

Then you go off on some rant about Healthcare costs:

"Of greater interest to me is comparing NASA funding to other things our society does. Back in October the Washington Post proposed canceling Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, and cited the need for health care for poor children as a worthier alternative. What few people recognize is that health care spending in the U.S. is 100 times the NASA budget"

I have no idea what the relevance of that statement is about. Are you saying, since Americans spend 100 time the NASA budget, whatever NASA wastes money on is no big deal?

Wow what logic!

"It would be nice if other American activities -- for example education -- showed the same kind of work at improvement."

Amazing, holding up NASA as a model for improvement. You surely live in Fantasy land. Good luck with that!

Re:Priorities

[Breakfast Pants]

Hmm, I'm pretty sure American education is struggling to improve as well. Struggling to improve and improving are two different things, and both edu and NASA are certainly doing the former.

Re:Priorities

[Ryan Amos]

Yep. The president wants a lasting legacy with "No Child Left Behind," which basically raised the bar significantly for public school performance while also slashing their funding. Public school sucks because they basically have to hire any idiot off the street.

My mother has been an elementary school teacher for 15 years and I made more at my first job out of college working level 1 call center tech support. You don't attract talent at those wages, especially with the bureaucracy you have to deal with in a public school district.

The even sadder part is that we could fix public schools for the next ten years on half of what we have spent in Iraq this year. Of course, that money wouldn't go right into the pockets of Halliburton, so the legislators and lobbyists aren't interested...

Shuttle has popular backing, Science doesn't

[Glasswire]

Unfortunately what I mean by popular backing is influencial Senators and Congress men protecting jobs and investment in several sites all over the country. Lean mean, robotic science projects don't generate this kind of big permenent infrastructure which drives it's own lobby in Washington.

Cost comparisons

[A nonymous Coward]

A shuttle launch costs $1B in new costs. That's not including any share of past, paid-for, R&D. That's staff, expendable tank, refurbishing the solid boosters and shuttle engines, fuel, etc.

The Deep Impact mission (which smacked into a comet so we could analyze the dust) and the Stardust mission (which return fabulous samples of comet dust) together cost $600M or $700M complete. You could no doubt find a similar mission to bring it to an even $1B.

This is not counting any share of the cost of failed probes or failed shuttles.

Which do you think returned more bang for the buck?

Re:Cost comparisons

[M0b1u5]

Actually, that isn't really true. The annual shuttle costs vary very little, regardless of how many times it/they fly per year. If only one flight happens, then, simplistically, you say that a shuttle flight costs 8 Billion or so. If 5 fly, then it's 1.6 billion per flight. Those numbers are WAY too high for any kind of program which makes any sense, but since when has the shuttle made any sense?

Actually flying the shuttle adds very little cost to the overall shuttle budget. The vast majority of costs are tied up on the ground, and don't depend on the thing actually making orbit. This is the real tragedy for NASA, because while the shuttle isn't flying, they're still paying the same annual rate as when it IS flying.

Gregg Easterbrook

[wiredog]

Also writes a weekly column on NFL football during the season.

Re:Gregg Easterbrook

[uncadonna]

I haven't seen much of his stuff lately, but in the 90s he used to publish stuff about climate change that was pretty much just plain wrong. mt

Eisenhower was right

[Thud457]

NASA's a WPA for the aerospace industry.

Meh. I guess it's better than squandering it on bombs and blowing peoples up.

Re:Budget woes?

[terrymr]

Don't forget how much of this 13 billion lands on Boeing/Lockheeds bottom line. Nasa doesn't really launch anything itself.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[tgd]

Deep space exploration via robotic probe is not sexy. A mission to Mars, a la...well..Mission to Mars, is sexy.

Clearly you didn't see Mission to Mars, or as we put it when we saw it, "Mission To Take My Eight Bucks".

Actually about $20K per person

[A nonymous Coward]

it would be cheaper to hand the Iraqis a million dollars each

Interesting idea ...

Population 26M. Call it 25 ...

The US has spent roughly $500B over 3 years.

That's $20K each, or, say, $50K - $100K per family.

It would have to be spread over three years, but that still seems like a pretty good sum.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[GreggBz]

Well, I certainly agree. Real science can be very provocative however. Many recent missions have made headline news because the prospect of life on another world is surely sexy. So are giant glossy pictures from the surface of another world. I don't know many people that don't find that amazing. The Internet has created a new fan base for NASA and the availability of media, images and press-releases keeps them under scrutiny, which is good. (kudos to JPL by the way, I frequent their site almost daily) It could be worse.. or it couldn't. In the 60's we may have been enticed, for better or worse, into the Apollo missions under the guise of science, when really is was about testing our limits and beating the Russians. BTW -- Stephen Baxter's book, Voyage, is an excellent read and deals with such topics in a compelling science fiction story. It conveys what NASA looks like, smells like and runs like in a very believable way.

Re:Budget woes?

[Surt]

OT: your sig

From the evolutionary position this is easy to explain. Meat is very, very dense calorie wise compared to veggies. When you're a human being struggling to get enough food for survival for, say, the last 10 million years, and your lifespan averaged less than 30 years, meat was extremely good for you. The heart clogging problems with the fat and cholesterol don't kick in until your average lifespan hits 40+ (how many people die of heart attack due to over-eating meat before 25?), and even then, the odds that it will impact your likelihood of reproduction are small. The bottom line: meat is bad for your longevity, not your reproduction, and for your ancestors it was very good for their reproduction.

Given the number of women advocating vegetarian lifestyles, it could be argued that given another 10,000 or 100,000 generations, the preference for meat taste will go away.

Re: NASA Priorities Out of Whack?

[Righ]

That's a recent, but not the most egregious case of near-sighted budget failures within NASA. All the science programs are being gutted, despite them having been the most successful and cost effective programs in the current space sector. Dawn stood out because it would have returned a mere $30 million to the coffers, the bulk of the $370 million budgeted for the mission having already been spent. Obviously you have to get your $30 millions here and there if you want to save a few billion to increase spending for the manned spaceflight program, however, it looked farcical to throw away $340 million already spent and a mission within months of launch in order to get that particular $30 million.

Dawn may have stood out in that regard as an obvious budgetary foul-up, but its indicative of a culture within NASA of administration that appears to be pandering to the short-term will of elected politicians rather than medium to long term human goals. There's necessity there of course, in that the survival of much of the public science in NASA is in the hands of the politicans, but we currently appear to be throwing the baby out with the bath water. When you cancel a science program, you not only lose the science that you fought to get funding for, but you send a message back to the bean counters that they spent however many billions of dollars on projects that never came to fruition. If you want to build central governmant distrust of science funding, this is a good way to do it.

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL

[metamatic]

You can't launch and repair secret spy satellites with a space probe. That's why the Shuttle will continue until there's a replacement.

Re:Budget woes?

[CheshireCatCO]

Wow. You clearly have no idea of the realities of the situation, yet you feel free to make wild claims about what you think can be done with NASA's money.

Let's see... $13 billion... of which most goes to the manned-missions right off. So that's ISS and the shuttles getting the bulk of the money. Research for aerospace stuff gets another reasonably heafty share. In fact, when you get down to it, the solar system exploration budget is around $2 billion, total. That goes to fund research, build new missions, and support existing missions.

In reality, missions are very expensive and mass-producing parts doesn't fix that. Every single mission has to be launched, which is a huge fraction of the total expense right there. Fuel isn't going to get a lot cheaper through the wonders of mass-production. Neither is the man-power needed to plan the details of each mission and to work out and check things like the trajectories. (I'm periphrially involved with selecting an extended tour on a mission right now. It's complicated to say the least.) And modular components only work if the modules are sufficiently useful to a broad number of missions. This is generally not the case, as it turns out. Every mission has specific goals and requirements that almost always demand a new suite of designs. (Check out the latest Mars missions; the new objectives have caused their instruments to be VERY carefully and specifically designed.)

And to put $13 billion into perspective: that's a few percent of what the war in Iraq has costed so far and around 1% of what it will ultimately cost us. In fact, that's the price of about 7 stealth bombers. Which were easier to mass-produce than interplanetary missions, incidentally.

Your intuition for the money here is dead wrong. I'm not saying NASA is above reproach; it very much so is not. (I can spend days ranting about how much they waste time and money.) But if you want to help solve the problem, you'll have to understand the situation first.

Re:It's not NASA, it's Bush

[WindBourne]

I am no fan of Bush. If you do not belive that, examine my posts or majority of my freaks (all but 3 are because of my anti bush postings). In spite of that, I really disagree with this story.

1. We have international commitments to supporting the ISS through a certain time. In fact, if we do not continue doing the heavy lifting the ISS will be worthless.
2. We need to move on. Since Nixon seriously cutback NASA, no single president has really pushed it forward. ALL of them have been a joke on it. Bush is at least focusing NASA, which is seriously needed.
3. The shuttle program is a joke. It was poorly designed to handle anything. It really does not lift that much. The crew support sux. And there is a real reason why the shuttle's blew up when it did; managerial incompetence. Both of the NASA heads were total jokes (yes, I know the report did not point a finger at either).
4. The ISS is interesting for doing life science research, but time to move on. We have learned a lot about living there as well as long-term constructions. It is time to apply these elsewhere.
5. The new rockets will correctly seperate cargo from human. To get ppl to the ISS does not need the shuttle. In addition, when sending up cargo, we do not need to take ppl or for that matter, a return vehicle. Yet we do. With the new rockets, it will give us the ability to launch very large cargos bound for one-way missions out of orbit. IOW, we can send big loads to the Moon or to Mars, or to Jupitor, or to Pluto. As it is, we now have to send loads that quite small. Imagine if we could send not only MSE, but the mars telecommunicaiton network as well as perhaps a global flyer. That would enable us to do some major work. Likewise, going to the moon, and staying for awhile, while require large cargo shots.

The only real issue that I see with Bush's focus, WRT to NASA, is the lack of funding. There are many things that I think bush is screwing up (outlandous defict (lack of revenue), his invasion of iraq, his spying on Americans, gitmo, etc), but NASA is not one of them

I agree

[Edward Ka-Spel]

In fact, we never should have left the Caves. And I will never forgive those ancients that originally left the water to live on the land.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[Bob3141592]

If NASA wants any funding at all, it has to portray what it does as sexy. Little wonder that manned moon bases and missions to Mars are what they're trying to sell, regardless of the actual feasability of either goal.

Unfortunately, this is correct. It's not NASA's priorities that need internal adjustment, because NASA doesn't control their priorities. They are set by the President and by Congress. Much of NASA's budget is earmarked for specific projects, and they have only limited discretion over the remainder.

NASA needs to do a better job of explaining to the public the benefits of different types of programs, and the cost/benefits of different goals. Robotics and Mission to Earth programs have vastly better ROI than a manned mission to Mars or the ISS or Space Shuttle do (which have essentially no R for a big OI). And even that PR function is controlled by Presidential appointments, hence the recent fundamentalist antiscience scandal.

Re:New NASA to-do list

[east coast]

This may not have been modded offtopic had you put in step 2 as "2. ???". It may have been modded funny instead.

You're going to love the Moon Base then

[WillAffleckUW]

as we use it to send rockets to Mars.

After all, people forget that NASA's height of popularity was when we were bogged down in an endless pointless war that we were losing, as the nation went bankrupt. A generation of kids grew up plastered to the TV set at each Moon launch.

Deja Vu.

More stadium exhibitions of gladiatoral combat for the masses.

Now, if we could just capture one of those eight-armed Martian Beasts, we could really have a show!

Easterbrook's priorities wrong

[drwho]

Easterbook just doesn't get it. Earth observation is nice, but it can be done with existing technology - commercial space satellites, high atmosphere observation balloons and planes. It doesn't require the scientific and organizational might that NASA embodies. The moon base does have uses. Firstly, there is the study of human phisiology in space. Second, there is the construction of telescopes and sensors of various types to give us a much better understanding of space. Third, is the mining of HE3 (heavy helium) for propulsion purposes. Fourth, is a platform for other space operations. It is going to be expensive. No doubt.

I agree that the space shuttle is a problem. But I don't understand why he brings up the two disasters seen on TV. It is as though he thinks that the real disaster was the PR problems which resulted. If that is the case, he is only making it worse. What we need is a redesigned shuttle. The Shuttle is out of date. There are new technologies that could be harnessed to make it better. In addition, there is the very real problem that the shuttles wear out. They may be reusable, but that doesn't mean they are going to last forever.

I want to see more funding on long term programs, the far-out stuff like NERVA, anti-gravity, and the like. These are the kind of programs that NASA was chartered for.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[CrazedWalrus]

Sure -- if they all look like Natasia Henstridge (sp?). The Nast, Big, Pointy Teeth are a real turnoff, though.

Tutorial on Bias

[hey!]

Biased much?

Only if having a point of view is biased. Being human we all have our biases of course, and these naturally (mis)inform our viewpoints. But this doesn't license you to throw around the accusation of "bias" every time you see an opinion you don't like, because to be fair you'd have to tell the entire world including yourself to STFU.

No, the only behavior that merits this charge is the practice of bias.

Consider the following statement:

NASA wants to keep pouring billions of dollars into the shuttle, the space station, and the White House's moon-base project--which benefit no one other than NASA bureaucrats and aerospace contractors--while eliminating many projects to study climate conditions on Earth.

A hypothetical example of bias would be if the Earth monitoring missions had moved to a different agency, say, EPA, Mr. Easterbrook knew it, and chose not to mention it. Or if the programs had been phased out and replaced by more cost effective ones. In that case you can justify calling the article "biased".

This kind of bias is the sophisticated liar's lie; when you mislead by leaving out context, you can lie without actually saying anything untrue.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[Random Utinni]

No, but finding aliens, a la Species, is.

Maybe NASA needs better salesmen

[east coast]

The budget cuts wouldn't be so easy if Joe Sixpack understood what NASA was doing. If NASA could come out and show more end products that produced a better "wow" factor Joe would back them more.

Most people don't see the value in collecting comet dust. But if you show them something that NASA R&D is doing for them today they might buy into it more.

Government budgeting is a popularity contest. Give the people something they can get behind and support, not technobabble they don't care to understand.

If NASA could show the direct effect the have on earthbound technology people would want more. Maybe we can get Al Gore to claim that NASA invented the Internet.

Re:Maybe NASA needs better salesmen

[east coast]

Al Gore didn't claim to invent the internet. He said claimed he "took the initiative in creating" it.

I meant it to be a bit more humorous that what it seemed to have come off as. In either case I'm sure you get the jist of what I'm saying. Tax payers want to see solid results, not studies and theories.

Re:Long range plans...

[east coast]

Why were the wooden boats that sailed across the oceans funded?

To cut the cost of shipping spices back to the Spanish? That's my guess. It's a direct benifit that people can understand. Now, tell me why Joe Sixpack should care about the origins of the universe and tell him how he can benifit from this knowledge.

Official NASA Mission Statement

[rabun_bike]

NASA Mission Statement

• To advance and communicate scientific knowledge and understanding of the earth, the solar system, and the universe.
• To advance human exploration, use, and development of space.
• To research, develop, verify, and transfer advanced aeronautics and space technologies.

http://naccenter.arc.nasa.gov/NASAMission.html

I think I'm with NASA on this one

[Expert Determination]

Preventing comet strikes would give taxpayers a return on their money...

Eh? It's the precise opposite. Creating a public fear of impacting comets or asteroids sounds like a classic example of a cash cow that would allow NASA to leech money from taxpayers.

Re:They're thinking creatively enough

[gwait]

Exactly. Why a space shuttle/station/moonbase? Bush wants the military in space before the Chinese get there. A president who thinks pre-emptive nuclear strikes are ok, would have no problem filling the heavens with space weaponry and a shuttle full of cowboys to maintain military supremacy.
The manned Mars mission is not likely to ever happen, but it's a great cover story for an overblown moon base.
Lets hope the Democrats get a real candidate for the next US president!

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[iminplaya]

Space is not sexy. Learning about the universe is not sexy. Learning about anything is not sexy. Fighting terrorism, now THAT'S sexy. Trillions of dollars worth of sexy. Proving once again...sex rules.

Re:Budget woes?

[mmell]

A mere drop in the bucket compared with, say, our MILITARY budget.

And . . . the priorities are being forced upon NASA by our government. "Drop all the science for science sake research, such as the Voyager probes passing the heliopause. Forget the Hubble - it can only show us pictures of places we can't go. We need to go to to Mars. It's the new space race!"

Assign the blame where it belongs and the reasons become clear. Unfortunately, the culture at NASA is essentially that of our fifth defense force (Marines, Navy, Army, Air Force, NASA).

So . . . what do you expect from a quasi-military operation?

There's another good use for a moon base...

[sirrobert]

There's another particularly good use for a moon base that I can think of: experience.

As of yet, we have no actual experience building on any environment other than our terran terrains. Prognosticators tell us that building on other planets with less human-friendly environments may become desirable some day (such as Mars). The moon is a (relatively) close place to build in a (relatively) hostile environment -- moreso than Mars in many respects. Building a moon base and keeping it inhabited for a time -- especially by inhabitants doing run-of-the-mill human functions, many of which (if history has anything to say about man) seem to go something like this:

1. ...
2. ...
3. do something stupid
4. ...
5. die.

would help us to run into the sorts of problems we might also be likely to have on other planets ... without the (currently) several-year travel commitment in case of emergency. Time to develop solutions to unforseen problems is not the least valuable thing NASA could spend its money on. It's just plain "raw experience."

And while they're at it, building telescopes, doing low-G experiments, and all those other fun things could be accomplished as well.

Re:Budget woes?

[Phat_Tony]

NASA doesn't have that much control over their money. There have been plenty of articles in recent news showing that NASA administrators want nothing more than to ditch the shuttle, it's an albatross around their necks. But they can't, because they've made promises to the international community to keep the International Space Station going, whether it's a waste of resources or not. They can't develop a new program quickly enough to meet our immediate needs for future launches. Beyond that, the shuttle program's been rife with problems, and they can't launch more shuttles without fixing them up, which is expensive. They're forced to dump huge amounts of additional funding into something they're trying to get rid of entirely.

Additionally, they've got this mandate from Bush to try to get to Mars ASAP, building a moon base first, which could use up their entire budget right there.

Beyond all of that, they feel they have to be careful to keep the public interested, or that their funding will be cut. Surveys have shown that most people are primarily impressed with human space flight, and I'm sure there's pressure on NASA to maintain manned missions even if they're just bread a circuses, and they could get a lot more science done for the money without them.

So I agree that $13 billion should be enough for NASA to accomplish an incredible amount more than they do, but not "should be enough" and isn't because they're all incompetent, but "should be enough" and isn't because they can't spend it on the important things for one reason or another.

And Mars doesn't test our limits?

[tjstork]

Mars, or even a base on the moon, most certainly test our limits. We'll be putting more stuff on the moon than we ever had, landing on places that we never could. AS far as Mars goes, what bigger test of a limit do you need than that? If anything robots do not test our limits at all, but manned flight does. If a robot screws up, so what, but if a manned flight screws up, boom. For that reason, to echo Jack Kennedy: "We choose to go not because it is easy, but because it is hard."

And PS, we have to beat the Chinese back to the Moon, and to Mars.

Re:Budget woes?

[SlayerDave]

$13 billion sounds like a lot, until you consider that the Pentagon has a FY 2005 budget of $401.7 billion, which is 30.9 times greater than the NASA budget (and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war). I personally believe that NASA's budget should be tripled or quadrupled. They should also streamline management to get better work done more efficiently. Space science is one of the few branches of science that is so prohibitively expensive and technically challenging that a concerted national effort.

For at least a decade!?

[iminplaya]

How 'bout the last three decades. The shuttle was a clunker from the day they decided to use its present design. The concept is great. But, to me, it's all about the execution. The shuttle is a result of pure politics and all its encumbrances with just enough tech to bring the astronauts back alive most of the time. For NASA to function properly, it will have to become a serious issue to the voters, and right now they're too distracted by American Idol...or is it The Great Race?

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[zippthorne]

If earth creatures are any cue, nasty, dangerous aliens will probably be "cute" and the docile, easygoing aliens will be "ugly."

from 2002, maybe.

[oneiros27]

NASA websites are supposed to have a 'last modified' date -- that one didn't. If you check the link, it goes to planning documents from 2002.

From the link they cite as a source, trim off the url down to 'codez' ... it'll then redirect you to the 'NASA Portal' w/ FY2007 Budget & Planning Documents, which includes a PDF with the 2006 Strategic Plan.

(I don't know what they've done to the PDF, but you can't copy/paste from it cleanly ... but searching on the text in it lead me to NASA Strategic Goals, which has the highlights)

I'd still recommend looking that the PDF, as it seems to the only place on the Internet that has the full breakdown of the goals into the sub-goals -- see the Appendix, starting on page 43 (counting by the PDF, not by the document's internal numbering)

Re:from 2002, maybe.

[rabun_bike]

Nice find! Here are the goals of the 2006 NASA strategic Plan. I think it is very interesting only one has anything to do with our own planetary system. The overall theme appears to be space dominance and aerospace technology.

Strategic Goal 1: Fly the Shuttle as safely as possible until its retirement not later than 2010

Strategic Goal 2: Complete the International Space Station in a manner consistent with NASA's International Partner commitments and needs of human exploration.

Strategic Goal 3: Develop a balanced overall program of science, exploration, and aeronautics consistent with the redirection of the human spaceflight program to focus on exploration.

Sub-goal 3B: Understand the Sun and its effects on Earth and the solar system.

Sub-goal 3C: Advance scientfic knowledge of the origin and history of the solar system, the potential for life elsewhere, and the hazards and resources present as humans explore space.

Sub-goal 3D: Discover the origin, structure, evolution, and destiny of the universe, and search for Earth-like planets.

Sub-goal 3E: Advance knowledge in the fundamental disciiplines of aeronautics, and develop technologies for safer aircraft and higher capacity airspace systems.

Sub-goal 3F: Understand the effects of the space environment and human performance, and test new technologies and countermeasures for long-duration human space exploration.

Strategic Goal 4: Bring a new Crew Exploration Vehicle into service as soon as possible after Shuttle retirement.

Strategic Goal 5: Encourage the pursuit of appropriate partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector.

Strategic Goal 6: Establish a lunar return program having the maximum possible utility for later missions to Mars and other destinations.

Re:Budget woes?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

First of all, 13B is ONE YEAR. Next year is paid for by ANOTHER 13B. Second of all, do the math. Let's say we need 10,000 people to manage the probe program (managers, engineers, secretaries, etc). Let's say it costs 100K per employee, just to be generous. That's only a billion dollars. That leaves another 12 billion.

That's what, less than a week of the Iraq quagmire? NASA's budget isn't that big, although I'm loath to feed their beast given their track record with things like the shuttle. You'd think they'd at least have proposals for the next gen shuttle, but I haven't heard a thing.

Maybe we leave earth monitoring to the ESA

[maddogsparky]

I can't help but notice how much NASA has been in the news lately with their scientists supposedly being muzzled for speaking out about global warming. NASA started as an engineering agency, but has been having public image problems (and politicians micromanaging) ever since it made science a priority at the end of Apollo.

Why not have NASA focus again on engineering (i.e. putting people in space is primarily an engineering task) that pushes the edge of what is possible (e.g. manned lunar/Mars/asteroid rondesvous, etc) and leave the earth science to other countries that have fewer ties between their poiticians and their science programs (how about somewhere that actually signed Kyoto?).

Re:Maybe we leave earth monitoring to the ESA

[PhysSurfer]

Why not have NASA focus again on engineering (i.e. putting people in space is primarily an engineering task) that pushes the edge of what is possible (e.g. manned lunar/Mars/asteroid rondesvous, etc) and leave the earth science to other countries that have fewer ties between their poiticians and their science programs (how about somewhere that actually signed Kyoto?).

Go back and read the article. Earth science is important to everyone who lives on the earth, and eats food produced on the earth. Near as I can tell, that includes the US, regardless of whether we signed the meaningless Kyoto treaty.

Your idea of having the world's biggest funder of science and most advanced scientifically country (the US) abandon an important branch of science like Earth science is at best glib, at worst foolish, short-sighted, and possibly malicious.

Re:Maybe we leave earth monitoring to the ESA

[maddogsparky]

I am by no means denying how important Earth science is. But I do ask this: where would the Earth scienc community by if not for the engineering that was done earlier in the space race? Skylab was an offshoot of the Apollo programs (it was a Saturn upper stage with some extra hardware tacked on). Weather satellites use boosters, electronics, and comunication systems based on work done in other programs. All the curent large boosters (with the exception of Arien) are derived from rockets that were used for balistic missiles or support of manned spaceflight (sometimes both, as in the Jupiter/Redstone rockets).

All the above programs involved large engineering expenditures that were driven by a strongly motivated group with a clear vision: make x that does y. NASA is trying to find its way out of the state its in where it has too many priorities and not enough funds or freedom to do them all. I'm advocating pearing down the todo list to build the hardware first so that the proven hardware is available to other groups that are interested in using it. How many programs have been cancled or tremendously over budget due to new requirements that kept stacking up before the first version of hardware flew?

Your idea of having the world's biggest funder of science and most advanced scientifically country (the US) abandon an important branch of science like Earth science is at best glib, at worst foolish, short-sighted, and possibly malicious.

I assure you that I have no malicious intent. I tend to disagree about the short-sighted part; I am a firm believer in the "if you build it they will come" strategy. The American West was opened dramatically to development after transportation and communication infrastructure was put in place (multi-month trips by mules, ox carts and wagon trains gave way to multi-day trips by railroad; multi-day mail (when it finally arrived) via pony express and stage coach gave way to almost instantaneous telegraph). We've already done the Louis and Clark bit and even the mule trains in space. If we build the railroad and telegraph, the scientists can get orders of magnetude more data when they go along for the ride than if they each put together their own mule train.

Regarding passing science off to other countries, I have reservations about administrations that edit reports by government scientists to downplay or downright change the meaning. I think its possible that those elements of the administration that put local or business concerns above scientific integrety might not be as damaging if they didn't have any source material to warp in the first place. Thats why I said leave the science to other countries.

Defending the Space Shuttle and Manned Flight

[tjstork]

Unmanned space probes are cool, no doubt, but manned space flight is where it is at. We have to learn how to live off planet. There is a whole universe that, absent any proof of intelligent life, is ours for the taking, and using NASA to create some orbital mirror of satellites with which we can watch ourselves flex is boring. I don't fund NASA so some scientist who can't get a job making a cool product can do a thesis, I do it so that I can be inspired, and yes, manned space flight is inspiring.

I like the Space Shuttle. Yes, we can rail on about how it didn't meet its goals, how it was overhyped, but stop for a moment and look at what it actually is and does? It's practically a space station in its own right, it is so big. It launches like a rocket, lands like a plane, can bring back stuff in a fairly roomy cargo bay and has a cool robot arm. It's turned the notion of in-space assembly from the stuff of science fiction into ho hum routine. Before the space shuttle, we didn't even know if we could build a human space habitat. Sure, we could launch one, but build one? And we've done it.

I wish that we could build a newer shuttle, and, I wish we could send it to the Moon. I understand that CEV is better built for that. But, when they launch that CEV, look around inside, and compare it to the shuttle. The new CEV will have less room than the old shuttle.

BIG IS BETTER

Re:Defending the Space Shuttle and Manned Flight

[Pchelka]

I had a very interesting conversation yesterday with someone who has worked with NASA since the space program's very beginning. Most of his work has been on unmanned spacecraft missions. He raised a very interesting question. If you were to take average people off the street, and ask them which astronauts were in orbit right now, how many people would actually be able to name even one of the astronauts currently on board the International Space Station? How many people would know that three of these astronauts were just launched into space yesterday, on board a Russian Soyuz rocket?

I agreed with my scientist friend that very few people would be able to name any of the current astronauts. If their is such strong public support for manned space exploration, then why doesn't the public pay more attention to it? When I was a kid, I always knew the names of the astronauts who were going up on the shuttle - Joe Allen, Pinky Nelson, Sally Ride, Mae Jemison - to name a few. These people were my heroes. Shuttle launches and landings were always covered in full on the TV news, and there were stories about the astronauts and their work in space on TV nearly every night. Now we only hear about the astronauts when someone dies. I doubt that most kids today know the names of any current astronauts. Most adults probably don't either. However, if you ask someone off the street who Britney Spears married, or what the names of Angelina Jolie's kids are, they can probably tell you. If you ask kids today who their heroes are, they will probably name sports figures or other celebrities, not astronauts.

If people today care so little about manned space exploration, why are we making it a national priority? We can focus on science instead and actually gain new knowledge about our universe and the origins of life. The science return on unmanned missions is so much greater than it is for manned missions, when you consider the amount of money spent.

Re:Defending the Space Shuttle and Manned Flight

[tjstork]

That's where NASA gets it wrong. First off, the public doesn't even know, when asked, who the Vice President of the United States is, and also cannot name the members of the Supreme Court, and probably doesn't know who Watson and Crick are.

I don't think the public needs its astronauts to be rock stars, it just wants to know they are up in space doing stuff.

Re:Budget woes?

[iminplaya]

(Score:0, Offtopic)

SEE?? I can predit the future. Waddya wanna know? Tomorrow's trifecta at Del Mar(Where the surf meets the turf)? The winner of the '06 World Series? Just name it. I'll be here all week.

Re:Budget woes?

[jreedy21]

And a huge chunk of it [NASA's $13 billion annual budget] is spent on bureaucractic bullshit. Paying admistrators, and their secretaries, and their benefits, and their health insurance, and remimbursing transportation costs, and federal audits, and enviromental impact surveys, and nasa.gov, and PR, and ...

This sounds like one of those Libertarian arguments about how much we spend on public schooling (~$10K per student per year) and how a couple of us could get together and spend half that much to teach students. Sounds like a great idea until you start asking questions like:
- How do the kids get to this undetermined location to take classes? Will you pay for transportation?
- What do the kids eat for lunch?
- What happens if one of them gets sick during the day? Does one of you have any medical training?
Etc., etc.

NASA spends a good deal of its budget on bureaucratic costs because any large organization has to do so. You start distributing money to thousands of scientists and engineers at 10 different centers and labs around the country, and accept bids from aerospace and engineering companies around the world, you're going to need to hire a bookkeeper or two, I'm thinking. And maybe having some technical people on staff who can judge whether construction/design/whatever bids from contractors are viable or not.

Oh, and PR and a Web presence aren't that important either, when you're one of the nation's largest science and engineering administrations and you're also the first stop for just about anyone who wants to learn about astronomy, planetary science, and aerospace technology. Goodness knows you don't want to attract any future scientists and engineers to this line of work, so shut down those public outreach efforts.

Any organization larger than three guys working out of the garage starts to have some overhead associated with it that takes up a significant percentage of an operating budget. That's just how it goes, unless we want NASA to be three Slashdotters sending up Estes rockets with cellphone cams strapped to the side.

What is wrong with you?

[rantingkitten]

13 billion. You say that as though it's an astronomical sum. To you and I, who measure things in hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars, it is. To the federal government, whose budget is in the trillions, and who can run deficits with near impunity, it's less than pocket change.

13 billion is less than 0.7 of the total federal budget. It's practically nothing. And it's one of the few government agencies that can actually produce real, tangible, ROI in terms of technology developed, not to mention the advances in our understanding of the universe, which can't be measured in dollars and cents.

Contrast your precious 13 billion to what else the government blows money on -- 553 billion on military expenditures (not counting veteran's benefits which account for another 76 billion). We've dropped 250 billion in just a few years on this Iraq war. Nearly 80% of the national debt is military related, and the interest alone nears 353 billion dollars. Per year.

And you're saying NASA is overbudgeted?

Yes, they could do a lot more if they funneled money into R&D for mass production, modular probes, fast cheap and out of control. But 13 billion is not really a lot to play with for a program that is, by its very nature, expensive. With mass production, you could possibly lower the manufacture costs per probe, but what about the not-cheap task of actually launching them, designing new ones, administration overhead, on and on?

When you think about all the stuff we have today that is a direct result of the space race, 13 billion is not asking a lot, and is far from being the most bloated of government spending.

How about engineering IN space

[maddogsparky]

I'd just love to see a headline:

"We sent mission xyz to rondesvous with iron/nickel asteroid foo. We successfully used a solar oven to refine the material and produce x kg of steel alloy pqr."

I keep hearing about in-situ resouce utilization, but it's not going to happen if we just keep sending probes that take pictures and measurments and don't actually do anything. Science is important, but it is a lot easier to piggyback science on an engineering mission than it is to use science-only missions to pave the way for something useful. Science probes have their place, but how many probes do we need to tell us that there is water ice on the moon and Mars? If we did missions to take advantage of what we already know, it's not that big of a step to do the same thing in a different place (e.g. sending a mission to Titan after developing the technology on Mars and the moon would mostly require a bigger rocket and powerplant that doesn't rely on the sun).

Interplanetary Cruiser

[zardo]

Personally I think the only thing earth observation satellites will ever do is predict doomsday scenarios, nothing more. They will never have any impact on civilization. In that sense, earth observation is more politicized than the international space station even. Every doomsday scenario in history has thus far turned out to be wrong.

The notion that we can actively affect earth's climate is ridiculous.

I say we get launch costs down and start building massive, massive projects in outer space. Inter-planetary cruisers, asteroid mining operations, giant orbiting greenhouses and what not. Start building city in the sky, make it possible for average joe to save a half mil and live in outer space. Then you can do all the earth observation you can handle.

Re:Interplanetary Cruiser

[Tin Britches]

"the only thing earth observation satellites will ever do is predict doomsday scenarios"

Weather satellites are earth observation satelliites. The data they
gather saves lives. How is that a doomsday scenario? And what about
prevention of property damage? Don't throw Katrina in my face.
What happened after we saw it coming doesn't count.

Re:Interplanetary Cruiser

[zardo]

Being able to predict the weather is one benefit, I'll give you that. But the article is talking about water vapor satellites, it sounds like these experiments will be preoccupied with the global climate change crowd.

Re:Interplanetary Cruiser

[Moofie]

"The notion that we can actively affect earth's climate is ridiculous."

The notion that you think you can authoritatively say what is going to happen to a system as obscenely complex as the atmosphere is ridiculous.

Do I believe in anthropogenic climate change? I'm skeptical. I'm also not making blanket statements, because folks who do that look silly once we have answers in hand.

Re:Interplanetary Cruiser

[zardo]

The notion that you think you can authoritatively say what is going to happen to a system as obscenely complex as the atmosphere is ridiculous.

I never said I was for or against. I agree with you 100%, I'm skeptical also. What I said was, whether or not it's real, I think even if we are faced with proof that if we continue to live the way we do we will kill ourselves in 50 years, then we will continue doing the exact same thing and kill ourselves anyways. The fact that they are looking for a doomsday scenario as unavoidable as "too much water vapor in the atmosphere" makes it even less appealing to pursue those theories.

Re:Interplanetary Cruiser

[Moofie]

I don't understand your argument. Who is "we" and who is "they"?

Re:Interplanetary Cruiser

[zardo]

We refers to humanity, they refers to those who would advocate NASA cut manned space exploration to do more earth observation missions.

When did earth science become NASA's job?

[el johnno]

The article's author seems to be arguing that NASA's main priorities should focus on areas of earth science. While I agree that earth science is important, I have to wonder how much NASA should even care about that stuff -- they are an aeronautics and space administration after all.

If I was head of another government department with a strong mandate for earth sciences (NOAA), I'd only want NASA's help to get some of my earth-pointing satalites up there and keep them flying -- and to stay out of the way beyond that.

The Space Shuttle Rocks!

[bloobamator]

The Space Shuttle program is not a "clunker". It generated a tremendous number of technology spinoffs. It pushed the envelope of space travel. It was the envy of the free world for decades. I am extremely proud of America's accomplishments with the Space Shuttle Program.

So we have better ideas and better technology now. And we should move towards these better ideas and away from the old technology of the Space Shuttle. But keep in mind that we wouldn't have the better ideas and better technology today, were it not for the Space Shuttle Program.

And The President Sets The Tone/Agenda

[Groovus]

The President names the head of NASA, the head of NASA sets the tone and agenda for the whole organization. Very rarely does the head of NASA not fall into line with the President's space policy (if he has one). Congress approves or disapproves the plan set forth under the direction of the NASA administrator. Thus the focus of the space program is directly traceable to the President's thoughts and goals in this area.

In addition to sending men to the moon/Mars being a good sound bite for the general public, manned missions tend to be heavily oriented towards a Florida/Texas locale with a subsequent influence on their economies. Considering the obvious interest our current President has in those states, it's one more reason (not the only one), this administration has focused on manned missions.

We need to find a better balance between manned and unmanned missions for NASA, I think the pendulum swings a bit too far in either direction sometimes, and now is one of them. They really do have a symbiotic relationship, and we have need of both. Apart from that, it's time to put the shuttle down and work on our next manned vehicle more seriously - there's no good reason to keep those things flying anymore, send one to the Smithsonian and call it a day.

Administration

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA should only exist to "administer" funding to space and high altitude projects. Their mission should be similar to the FAA. The FAA does not build planes, does not do research into aerodynamics, nor do they fly planes. The FAA simply regulates air traffic and sets government policy on air traffic. NASA should do the same for space travel and space science. I am a space scientist and I shudder everytime I hear that NASA will be involved in a project. Not to mention that 13 billion dollars isnt that much when we are spending $200 a year on a selfish war!

Creativity Requires Money To Act

[cmholm]

Combine NASA's budget with it's marching orders from the Administration and Congress, and you've got a situation that in-house creativity ain't gonna solve.

Between the ISS and Shuttle ops, 40% of the budget goes to Lock-Mart and Boeing just to keep the ISS' lights on. Then 25% for technologies to support the Moon/Mars plan.

The remaining 35% ($5.3 bil) for space science can only go so far. Got existing missions to support/complete. Plus, this Administration ain't too hot on Earth science missions. The data returned tends to include a lot of climatology data they don't want to hear about, so it's cheaper to not collect the data in the first place, rather than twist researchers' arms after the fact.

because NASA is focussed on UFOs

[Chemkook]

Anyone who is in the "know", knows what NASA's primary object is.

If not, view this video.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-908036967 6973948865

Colonisation is vital to survival

[soldeed]

We are in a race against time against catastrophe. This planet is a death trap that history (as attested in the fossil record) has shown time and again in mass extinctions, supervolcanoes, tsunamis, asteroid impacts, ect. The only way we are going to survive long term is to establish manned colonies and spread out in the universe, and we are behind schedule! Our manned space program is not a frivolous waste of time and rescources. What better science can be done by a rover that cannot be done better by a trained geologist on site? No rover or probe sent to the moon ever did a better job than the apollo astronauts, whose scientific accomplishments are often glossed over or ignored. Plans are afoot to construct a huge array of antennas on the lunar farside making the most awesome radio telescope ever concieved, but It WILL NOT get built without MANNED spaceflight! It is hyperbol to suggest that science funding is being permanently cut. The manned program needs more rescources NOW to re-establish capability to leave earth orbit (that we foolishly discarded 35 years ago after spending billions to develop it! At the same time They must finish the space station to meet international obligations and only the shuttle can do the job. This is only a temporary situation. The Shuttle WILL be retired in 2010, and after the CEV and associated boosters are developed their operating costs will be far lower than the shuttle. More of NASA's budget will then be available for a more robust science program. And as I have said, you will not be able to beat the science that can be done by astronauts, on site. But the most important thing is, in the wake of NASA's scientific explorations establishing infrastructure, private concerns for mining, construction, tourism, what have you, will follow, and the first space colonies will get started.

Touche

[A nonymous Coward]

A hit, a very palpable hit!

Re:Budget woes?

[mbrother]

Here's the problem. NASA has a budget measured in billions, yes, and it has seen steady small increases in recent years. The problem is that NASA has been asked to do 50% more things with a 5% budget increase, and the mandate is for manned efforts to return to the moon and Mars. NASA does has been slashing budgets for space science. Those of us who value NASA's support of space science are crying about the budget because it has been cut year after year. You might as well ask what's the problem with the US budget every year when so much income comes in? Anytime your needs outstrip your income, you have a budget problem, no matter the absolute number on that income.

When Reporters Don't Read the News

[iamlucky13]

Amen. People like this author bug me, so I'm going to rant for a bit.

For at least a decade, it's been clear that the space shuttle program is a clunker. Nonetheless, NASA's funding remains heavy on the shuttle and the space station, while usually slighting science.

Ok, so you missed out on the "Shuttle to Retire by 2010" headline by about 2 years. Also The fact that they are working under a mandate to develop a new crew vehicle and a new versatile heavy launch vehicle means nothing to the author. I'll ignore the international committment to the ISS involved here, because you did too, but this next quote is a doozy.

What's really going on is that NASA holds the taxpayers in contempt.

Yes, we all know that NASA hates taxpayers. "Hey all you people who pay our salaries...you suck! This isn't about learning new things or expanding human presence. It's about burning money...muahahaha."

As for the moon base, for three decades NASA has sent nothing to the moon, not even a robot probe.

You forgot about Clementine (NASA) and Smart-1 (ESA). Lemme make a comparison: Since the wrap up of the Apollo missions (the data of which is still being studied, to answer another paragraph from the article), there have been twice as many missions dedicated to studying the moon (not counting earth based observations/experiments or pre-apollo missions) as there have been to Mercury, Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune combined, ever. Plus, right now, during this supposedly sad time in exploration, missions to Pluto and Mercury are on their way, tripling the count!

The Webb telescope will look billions of light-years toward the edge of the observable universe... It is sure to produce spectacular images of very distant galaxies, plus knowledge of esoteric value--but is highly unlikely to discover anything that will matter to your life or mine...That the telescope mega-project is named for James Webb, a former NASA bureaucrat, rather than after some great explorer or thinker, says volumes about the agency.

Let's start with an argument illustrating how little you know about where science is now (trying to understand how the world works by exploring what happened 10^-33 seconds after the universe began...knowledge extremely useful in understanding and manipulating fundemental particles), and finish up with a show-stopping point about the project name. They then try to trump it's worth by comparing it to the delayed TPF, a mission which overlaps the Kepler Observatory in many aspects and looks for earth sized planets we don't expect to even be able to see directly for decades, and neither of these offer the same thing JWST does.

Almost all NASA findings since the moon program have come from automated probes such as Cassini

Wait a second, didn't you say we learned nothing from the moon trip except how to survive in space (a lesson which arguably has perhaps some value if we truly want to become spacefaring)? How is the moon a milestone in light of that statement? And are you saying all of these long-term microgravity experiments in genetics, fluid mechanics, combustion, biology, etc are almost worthless? What about engineering advances, like rockets designs still in use today?

Ok, I'm wasting too much time here, but further fallacious arguments the author makes or implies is that earth science can only happen from space (wow...just wow) and can only come from NASA projects, and that we're not spending enough learning how to deflect asteroids we don't even know are heading for our planet. That last one is easy for people to be concerned about, but the scale of all proposed methods compared to the probability of an impact makes for a really low benefit/cost ratio. Currently, NASA is focusing on cataloguing threats, rather than spending tons money on an umbrella that is full of holes for a place that goes thousands of years between rains.

Re:When Reporters Don't Read the News

[TheKidWho]

Bingo!

Unfortunately most people don't really think when they make there insane comments. They THINK they are thinking but they really aren't.
Especially authors like this guy, they drive me nuts.

mod parent up! astronauts cleaning toilets?

[fantomas]

Mod parent up as insightful. Get rid of the administrators and secretaries and... (etc, etc) - you end up with what? Highly trained very expensive astronauts painting the fences round the airbases rather than flying? (somebody's got to do it!). The country's top astrophysics experts paying for telescopes on their personal credit cards and typing up the invoices rather than looking at the stars? (somebody's got to do the paperwork!).

Big organisations need the little guys as well as the big guys. Now you might want to tune up the organisation, but don't trash it all. There's a lot of little guys keeping the machinery running. Try telling the army to sack everybody apart from its combat troops and see where you are in six months...

Re:mod parent up! astronauts cleaning toilets?

[mudetroit]

This is still flawed thinking though, although there are problems with comparing it to all of NASA's operations. His arguement regarding schools falls down around it's ears when you compare the public school system to the vast majority of private schools. These schools manage to provide all of the services that he mentioned while being vastly more expensive on a per student basis then the average public school.

Re:Budget woes?

[Stephan Schulz]

First of all, 13B is ONE YEAR. Next year is paid for by ANOTHER 13B.[...]

That's what, less than a week of the Iraq quagmire?[...]

That's what I found interesting. Burried in the article is an estimate that the manned moon project will cost as much as one year of the war in Iraq (200 billion). Seen the other way round: End that war, and we can be on the moon next year. And NASA can use all of its normal budget for robot missions and earth science, too!

The money would even be going to roughly the same companies...

On JWST and TPF

[Trapezium Artist]

As someone who is closely involved in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), I find the way that Easterbrook chooses to pitch it against Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) quite peculiar. He thinks that looking for the first galaxies that formed in the Universe with JWST is esoteric, which in some senses it may well be, but searching for planets around other stars with TPF is, for all practical purposes, equally so. Both goals are, nevertheless, very exciting and inspiring.

In fact, JWST is a general purpose observatory in much the same way Hubble is, and will enable a very broad base of astronomy, from cosmology at high redshift in the early Universe, all the way back to the formation of planetary systems in our own Galaxy, and to the study of objects in the Kuiper Belt of our own solar system. Again, practically speaking, these are all esoteric and yet you only have to look at the public's fascination with the enormous number of astonishing discoveries that Hubble and other astronomical telescopes have made to realise that such things play a vital role in our philosophical understanding of our part in this vast Universe.

With regards the idea that JWST is somehow NASA's spolied child, keep in mind that the US astronomy community identified it as its number one priority in the most recent Decadal Review of the National Academy of Sciences, along with the European and Canadian communities: NASA is following through on this outside recommendation. Of course, there are grave problems in the NASA space science budget and no-one likes to see missions cut or delayed, and yes, there have been cost overruns on JWST (albeit largely due to non-technical issues outside the JWST project's control), but it's simply wrong to believe that NASA has somehow made its difficult decisions in a vacuum.

Most astonishing though is Easterbrook's naive assertion about gravy train aerospace contractors building the JWST: just who, exactly, does he think is going to build TPF? A couple of University of Podunk astronomers and a dog? TPF is, if anything, even more technologically challenging than JWST and can only be built by many of the very same aerospace contractors: it's bonkers to think otherwise.

Finally, on naming the former Next Generation Space Telescope after James Webb, while, I remember very clearly the moment that was announced by NASA and yes, it was a bit of a shock. All the same, it's important to remember that Webb put in place much of NASA's space science program at the same time as running Apollo, so his credentials are respectable at the very least. In any case, get over it: let's get the JWST done and launched, and answer some of those fascinating esoteric questions.

Re:On JWST and TPF

[iamlucky13]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does not the TPF also overlap somewhat the goals of the Kepler mission, also? If so, that would be another reason to favor JWST over TPF.

Also, I know that what happened at the very beginning of the universe (10^-33 seconds and earlier) is of critical interest to theoretical physicists. That was the only time when energy levels were high enough to create conditions predicted in their models. Understanding what happened in that incredibly brief instant that we're far short of recreating here on earth may be one of the keys to unifying quantum mechanics and relativity and developing a cohesive M-theory. Truly understanding why the fundemental particles behave the way they do and being able to predict their actions under certain conditions (you know, like maybe decaying to produce usable energy) certainly seems a lot less esoteric than knowing that there is a planet similar to earth 1000 light years away that would take somewhere on the order of 10 million years to reach at the speed of current rocket technology.

Every single word in Easterbrook's article contributes to my suspiscion that he is nothing more than an ignorant jester who likes to throw rocks at ordinarily quiet and productive beehives simply for the amusement of watching them get riled up. The worst part is that other ignorant people, instead of educating themselves and forming their own opinions, take his word as gold.

Re:On JWST and TPF

[Trapezium Artist]

Kepler, TPF, and SIM are all in the business of exoplanets, yes, that much is right, but they go about it in very different ways. Kepler will stare for long periods (hundreds of days) at patches of the sky, measuring the brightness of about 100,000 fairly bright stars simultaneously, and searching for small, regular dips in their lightcurves, indicating a planet transiting across the stellar surface. No light is detected directly from the planet itself, so Kepler's main goal is measure the statistical occurence of terrestrial-mass planets (and bigger).

TPF is an imaging mission, looking at one star at a time, where there are good reasons to suspect the presence of planets. Using long baseline interferometry to null out the light from the star, TPF will then hope to pick up the (relatively) very faint light from any planets in orbit around the star. TPF will also aim to carry out spectroscopy of this planetary light, to ascertain the presence of tell-tale atmospheric tracers.

Finally, SIM, behind Kepler in the mission queue, but ahead of TPF, also uses interferometric techniques to make very precise astrometric positional measurements. Thus SIM will not image planets either, but will infer their presence as they cause stars to wobble very slightly as the two orbit around each other. For example, Jupiter causes the Sun to wobble, but the mutual centre of mass lies inside the Sun, so the wobble is very small indeed.

Hope this clarifies things.

Let me lay out the NASA budget for you.

[Valdrax]

First of all, 13B is ONE YEAR. Next year is paid for by ANOTHER 13B. Second of all, do the math. Let's say we need 10,000 people to manage the probe program (managers, engineers, secretaries, etc). Let's say it costs 100K per employee, just to be generous. That's only a billion dollars. That leaves another 12 billion.

You're very ignorant about where NASA spends its money. Almost all of it goes to multi-year projects, and most of it goes into hardware and fundamental science research. Nothing at NASA gets done in a single year -- period. The scale at which they operate and the technology that they work with cannot be invented, launched, and complete its mission in a single year's time. If you want to look at where NASA spends its money, go straight to their FY2007 budget request. Let's look at some highlights.

Their "Science" budget primarily covers their space probes for $5.3 bil. This is what you would fund exclusively in your proposal. Their "Exploration Systems" budget primarily covers technology development for manned and unmanned exploration of the surface of celestial bodies as well as propulsion and life-support research for $3.9 bil -- most of this goes to next-generation shuttle-replacement development. Running the Shuttle, the ISS, and miscellaneous space flight support goes under "Space Operations" for $6.2 bil. The rest is eaten up in "Cross Agency Support," "Aeronautics Research," and the "Inspector General" for $1.2 bil.

The Science budget goes the operation and development of space probes and telescopes. Probes in development range from $40 million to $443 million per year of development. The James Webb Space Telescope is the most expensive project at $443 mil. in 2007 and will cost a total of $4.5 billion dollars (over 1/4 of this years budget if paid for all at once). Just running the two Mars probes is costing $85 million in operational costs.

The cheapest mission I could find (per this year's budget) is the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, which will send up 4 identical satellites to take 3D images of the magnetospheric boundary. It costs $40 million this year, but it will run $700 million total including $140 million for the actual instrument. NASA projects are not cheap (though they're nothing compared to war and social programs).

Of course they cost $100 million -- NOW. That's because they're designed and custom-built every friggin' time. It's an incredibly wasteful and stupid method of construction. If you made three standardized types that were EXACTLY the same, except that you could plug standardized modules into it, you would save immense amounts of money. It's called "mass production", perhaps you've heard of it.

Sensor development is the majority of the cost of the probe. Power, propulsion, communication, etc. systems are already mostly standardized. You don't see mass manufacturing savings until you start getting above hundreds of units, generally speaking. Now, exactly what kind of missions do you imagine NASA using hundreds of identical space probes for that all carry the same kind of sensory equipment?

There aren't any. Every time we send up a single probe it's because that's the best information we can get with the technology currently available to study an object. If we sent up two probes, then we'd have the exact same quality of information in (for the sake of argument) half the time. However, time isn't our biggest cost here -- it's the launch costs, followed by the sensor costs (both R&D and production), and followed by the personnel costs for R&D and for operating the probe once it's active.

When we send future missions, we want to get better data, so we design new sensors. Space launch is so expensive that there's no point in sending up redundant space craft to accomplish what we could have done with one alone.

NASA isn't allowed to think - thank the president

[Splork]

They get to follow the whim of the current crop of politicians who decide on crazy wasteful goals. The cold war is over, there is no opponent to outrace to get somewhere in space using the most resources humanly possible. They need to refocus on practical stuff but what politician cares about that?

Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty

[gstone]

A few people have posted comments on this thread linking to Gregg Easterbrook's NFL column, but no-one has mentioned his article from March 1980, "Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty." Before the first shuttle even flew its first mission, Easterbrook already argued stongly against the wisdom of the programme. This article became quite widely read after the Challanger distaster, and again after Columbia.

In fact, a quick Google search throws up a long list of articles from TNR, The Atlantic, and Slate.com, etc., following a similar theme. This guy has been chipping away on this line for a long time now...

Dear lord

[geekoid]

Lets not honor are agreements with other antions.

We are obligated to get certian thing for the space station up there, and right not the shuttle is all we got to do it.

Yes, NASA need a bigger budget.
Yes, the space shuttle needs replacing. Persoanlly, I think the 'space plane' way of getting up and down is the way to do it. That's another topic.

But we have commitments.

Re:Academic welfare....

[geekoid]

They do more then launch probes. In overall dollars, NASA has made money in tax dollars for the US.

Look at the big picture

[geekoid]

There would be a varity of TV shows, News feeds, books all formed around this. All the people that do that pay taxes.

It may create as serious of funded observatories, which means more Jobs with all the support industries. Again, more tax dollars brought in.

Not to mention the chance of not becoming extinct.

FInally, the revinue generated by the spin off from NASA have paid back 13 tax dollars for every dollar NASAhas spent.

Re:Is NASA really necessary?

[IceAgeComing]

I think NASA has out lived its usefullness.

I disagree provided NASA's goals are framed in terms of basic exploratory science. The number of things we can learn about our own planet potentially has long-range economic benefits. Of course, we can't say it definitely has those benfits until we perform the science. Climate satellites have a huge potential to discover what effects the burning of fossil fuels has on global weather patterns, yet funding for these satellites is being cut.

This is completely nonsensical to me.

Re:Manned space Program is total waste

[geekoid]

Your statement is completly inaccurate. The cmopanies that make products based on the MANNED mission spin offs have paid more to the feds in taxes, then NASA costs.

I disagree

[thePig]

I disagree.

The priorities are different, but not wrong.
There is a lot of He 3 in the moon, of which say a truckload can produce electricity for the whole of America for 1 full year.*

How do we get it? By mining.
How do we mine it? By having a moon base.
How do we transfer it here? By shuttles.
Simple.

And if NASA can bring back that much He3, then I guess funding for NASA is going to be much much higher for future missions.

*Considering that fusion is going to be a reality in 10 years, of course.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[beta21]

So if I wanted to make the voyager mission look sexy, I'd need a lady with sufficently large cleavage to have voyager sticking out of it. Then it would be sold to congress and voila we have a voyager mission....

Re:Manned space Program is total waste

[mattinjersey]

OK maybe my statement about RED and BLUE states was invalid. I retract that.
But I stand by my other statements.
Read what Bob Parks, a respected UMD physicist, has said about the U.S. space program: http://www.bobpark.org/

SHUTTLE: THE SPACE SHUTTLE DOESN'T WORK IT NEVER DID WORK.
Why is everyone afraid to say so? The real problem isn't foam falling off the fuel tank. The shuttle was sold to Congress as a way to launch things into space more cheaply. On the contrary, it's the most expensive way to reach space ever conceived. The problems we're facing now result from the refusal to acknowledge that reality. Initially, anything that went into space, including commercial and military satellites, was required to be launched from the shuttle. With the total cost of the shuttle program at about $150B, the average cost/flight is about $1.3B. The shuttle was strangling space development before the Challenger disaster. Then it was declared to be a science laboratory, but no field of science has been affected in any way by research that has been conducted on the shuttle or space station. The last scheduled research mission was the final flight of Columbia in 2003. The shuttle's only mission now is to supply the ISS.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[Thuktun]

So, is finding aliens, a la Alien, sexy?

Well, there is that scene at the end where Riply gets partially undressed...

NASA's true purpose

[jridley]

NASA is a pork machine, with a side of election year razzle-dazzle.

I'm as big a fan of space exploration as there is, and my dearest desire for humanity is for us to stop spending so much time trying to kill each other and instead pursue our destiny in space.

But NASA isn't going to do it for us, not the way it's structured now.

Still, it's better than most anything else we've got.

Re:NASA's true purpose

[Forbman]

NASA in and of itself is not a "pork machine", but is used by the reps of states containing divisions of the companies associated with the space program, such as Boeing, Lockmart, Loral, etc., as well as the states and districts that contain major NASA facilities (notice that most of these facilities exist because at the time they came to be, a politically powerful politician got them to be in their districts...), etc. It's really a Congressional "pork machine". The Space Shuttle is serviced by two major defense contractors, who are in some good $$$ in contracts in "supporting" (or prolonging) the Space Shuttle program. Because Congress allocates the $$$ that NASA spends, despite what NASA's director may wish, and essentially has the final say on its budget, even though it is an Executive Branch office, it will always be that way.

We like to blame NASA's director for its problems, but the problems are really created by Congress and lobbyists from various constituents that get their slop from the trough by way of NASA.

Re:NASA's true purpose

[jridley]

Absolutely, congress is almost entirely to blame, in concert with the contractors. NASA itself is amazingly well-stocked with hard-working true believers that want to do good science and lead the way to knowledge and the frontier. But they're only allowed to do so inasmuch as it's good for the election; mostly, that means bringing more aerospace jobs into a congressman's district. It really needs to be somehow isolated from that situation.

better use of moonbase

[GeekyMike]

Screw your moonbase. I'm gonna make my own moonbase, with blackjack... and hookers...

Re:better use of moonbase

[mfrank]

They're not hookers, they're hoors. Tousands und tousands of hoors. It *is* the moon, after all.

space shuttle out of whack ...

[virtualthinker]

No Kidding ... The shuttle has been out of whack from day one. Fairly common knowledge also. Design was driven by funding instead of what was needed.

Re:It's not what makes sense...

[lmlloyd]

You know, actually I don't agree with your statement at all. On the surface it sounds good, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. If you ask any 'sexy' celebrity, model, singer, or whatever, what they think are the most important issues, I guarantee you every single one of them will have "the enviroment" or "global warming" on their top 5. I would be surprised if a single one of them had space exploration anywhere on their list.

I actually think that environmentalism/global warming/pollution is a very 'sexy' issue, in that it is something that anyone with any cultural influence feels we 'should' spend money on. Space exploration, moon bases, space stations, and all that, on the other hand, are decidedly 'geeky' not 'sexy' and as such always fall in the category of "we can't even feed everyone on Earth, why should we be spending money on space."

NASA never was just a bunch of bureaucrats

[Pchelka]

You claim to be a space scientist, but you seem rather ignorant of how and why NASA was originally formed. Your post sounds as though you believe that NASA originally consisted of a bunch of bureaucrats whose sole purpose was to adminster grants awarded to corporations and educational institutions, and to set government policy on activities in space. This has always been a part of NASA's mission, but it is not the sole reason for NASA's existence. When NASA was formed in 1958, it maintained 3 research laboratories - it now has 10 such laboratories. Scientific research and the development of spacecraft and spacecraft instruments have always been a part of the NASA organization. Some work was contracted out in the past, as it is today, but NASA has always employed its own scientists and engineers.

Re:Budget woes?

[kesuki]

You've fallen for the Average lifespan fallacy. human being have never been prone to just 'dropping dead' at 30. death under 60 has always been due to 'disease' or 'accidents' or 'at the hands of your fellow human' what made the average lifespan 30 or so years for so long throught human history was infant mortality. durring some of the most culturally backwards times in human histories babies have had less than a 1 in 3 chance of survivng their first year of life. now you take one person who lives to 60, one who lives to 1 year of age, and one whop died at 20 of the plauge and you get an 'average' lifespan of 30 years. well, sure statistically you had a 66% chance of not making it to 60 years of age, but i'm not so certain the people who died at one year of age were even aware of the problem ;)

the single biggest factor in prolonging human lifespans has been in the 'saving' of infants from diseases and death in child birth from being in the uterus backwards being unable to be safely delivered through natural childbirth. Go areound ask your friends how many were delivered by Cecarian section? nearly every one of them would havesuffocated int heor own mothers womb, unable to be delivered. some midwives were practiced in 'turning' the babies, but that is a risky procedure to both mother and child, which is why nowadays we just cut the mother open and take the baby out.

The fallacy in your argument is that somewhere along the course of human evolutiuon people mysteriously didn't live past 30 years of age, which has never been true, ancient chinese and other cilvilizations writings speak of people living much longer than 60 years even without any 'modern' medicine to help them along the way. the average may have been 30, but that was not a typical age to die even then. BTW, meat was generally not in the buudget of the 'common worker' who hasd to susist of cheper grains. and as such the erarliest history of heart disease are in the aristocratic ruling classes who could afford to eat meat daily, instead of on 'sunday' (if they were that lucky) the primary exception were fishermen, etc, however fish has none of the negative heart health effects that 'red meat' does.

with the exception of the plains indians who had easy access to bison meat, enough to preserve for 'year round' consumption very few early civilizations had easy access to red meat. cattle are very expensive and wasteful creatures to raise, they consume roughly 39 times their selling weight in grasses and grains(over their life time). what's more 'profitable' 39 lbs of grains or 1 lbs of 'red meat' although with cattle you can pretty much ground up the entire plant into cattle feed, wheras humans would only eat 'the grain' so that does change the picture, since one can sell 'the grain' to humans, and 'grind up the plant' for inclusion into feed, and still wind up ahead. having both many lbs of grain and many pounds of cattle to sell.

The 'preference' for meat taste is actually an addiction to the chemicals that eating meat produces in the body. so no without 'genetic alteration' this trait will not go away, yes people can learn to live without meat (how many centuries did the japanese go without any access to red meat? having only fish and rice and fruits and vegrables?) but as has been shown by the 'modern' japanese taste for burgers and beefbowls, this trait does not go away simply because a culture rejects or has no easy access to red meats.

Re:Budget woes?

[Surt]

You've missed several key facts.

First, most of human evolution occurred before the advent of writing. During that period, violence, malnutrition, and disease were (likely) the main killers, and infant mortality isn't even factored into estimates of the average lifespan. By the time you reach the point where the chinese are keeping written records, you're long past the point where those issues were the primary determinants of reproductive success. Likewise, by the time you have plains indians, you're long past the point in evolution where the value of meat helped to determine reproductive success. By the time you have trade, or people practicing agrarianist economies, you're too close to the present, you have to think about what happened further back, when we were closer to apes than modern humans.

Again, with the japanese, you're thinking far too short term for evolution. 10 generations or 100 is not nearly enough. Interesting variations are only going to occur in the 10,000 to 100,000 generation span.

Re:Budget woes?

[koroviev (begemot)]

nah, you forget that launching 1 kg to jupiter and launching 1000kgs to jupiter costs just about the same, but launching 1000x1 kgs to 1000 points in the solar system costs 1000 times more. So, the optimal strategy lies with missions as big as possible, not small ones.

I heartily dislike this author :(

[koroviev (begemot)]

The Apollo missions have returned the taxpayers money many times over - cheap small personal computers were developed for those missions (LEMs nav comp). Bill Gate's owes it ALL to Apollo. NASA should try to do the impossible, period. The impossible is a) inspiring, b) the only way to ensure return of the investment through the need for inovative solutions. Aiming directly for return of investment ensures stagnation; movement is often confused for progress.

And the impossible is: 1) Sending a 1 ton probe to Alpha Centauri (that would get there within 50 years:) (requires nuclear propulsion)

2) Sending a people to Mars (requires cheper alternatie to rockets - Linear accelerator/Space fountain/etc)

3) Building a space elevator (requires novel materials - mass produced infinite carbon nanotubes)

Im tired of rockets. Things are going nowhere with rockets, that they havent been before.

NASA's priorities are sure out of whack

[oldFart]

They sure are out of whack. It has been clear the shuttle has been a clunker since the 1970's. That 65 feet of man-rated cargo bay has been a disaster all along. I worked for NASA in the 1970's and it has always been a problem. It has cost too much, it has killed two crews so far, and it costs $500M + per launch to do nothing.

We get at least 10 times the bang per dollar with well defined robotic missions as with manned missions that have been useless tourism. Those are NASA's figures. I think the economic advantage to robots is more, having been there when this shuttle mess was conceived.

If you want manned missions, define a coherent mission for them. Going and being a tourist is not the answer. We have to define missions that involve people going into space to *stay*. They are not going to be visitors; they are going to be colonists. Otherwise stay on the ground and and use robots.

moon is bad for telescopes

[bitingduck]

The "dark" side of the moon is a terrible place for an optical telescope (where you can probably safely read optical as extending from IR to X-ray.)

It's not dark all the time-- it's just that the moon is tidally locked to the earth so we never see the backside, but it sees plenty of sun, which gives it huge temperature swings, which isn't good for precision optical alignment.

There's also stuff like meteor impacts to deal with-- they cause vibrations and kick up dust.

And then there's the gravity well that you have to drop all the sensitive equipment down without breaking it. It's not like mars, where there's at least a little atmosphere for braking. On the moon you have to do all the braking yourself. It adds both mass and complexity (risk) to a space mission.

Floating out in space (earth trailing like Spitzer, or L2 like WMAP or the planned JWST) is pretty benign by comparison.

There might be ok arguments for an array of radio telescopes, but they're probably least likely to be built there due to the large size/mass of stuff that you have to transport.

More accounting tricks

[A nonymous Coward]

The best NASA can manage is four flights a year, if they are lucky with tiles and other refurbishing. If they had no shuttle, they could lop off 5-10 billion dollars a year from their budget. Whether you bill that money to one flight, all flights, or the first flight, it's still way too damned much money for so little functionality. The most expensive expendable rockets are, I think, around $200M.

And NASA is now talking of mothballing the space station as soon as it is complete. This all belongs in Alice in Wonderland. They will spend $25-50B building something they intend to stop using as soon as it is built. They could send 100 probes for the same amount of money.

Someone ought to be shot.

Climate research just a sop? Bullsh*t.

[perfessor multigeek]

So, way down in there you said If they don't play as many political games as possible, their budget won't survive. which is kinda true.
This makes it a shame that you started with NASA does environmental and climate research to please a voting constituent [sic] that would otherwise be opposed to space research. which is basically horseshit.

Dude, space scientists have been committed to climate research from before there was a NASA. Do ya know why?
Evidently not.

Because agribusiness, oil companies, large contractors, port managers, the military, and lots of others count on accurate weather data.

Remember the Normandy invasion? Before your time. A couple of guys going up a beach while some other guys tried to kill them. The whole thing was scheduled around the weather reports.

Howsabout farms. Heard of those? Bad predictions of climate change over, say, ten to twenty years, means first of all deeply fucked yields, low to zero profit, and, sometimes, as a couple of people in Louisiana, Alabama, and, oh, did I mention six or seven midwestern states have been learning, flooding bad enough to destroy the entire infrastructure. And then there's what climate change is doing to actual grownup, non-hippie concerns like real estate values, the accelerating disintegration of the permafrost-supported highways and oil pipelines and, oh, pretty much everything else north of, say, Alberta.

Now, I could go on about such non-hippie concerns as the possible incipient collapse of several major crops, starting with bananas, or the scrambling going on in the lumber industry or the thousands of deaths a year from mudslides in places like the Philippines and Central America or the very real and immediate problems port facilities around the world are facing from increased storms and rising sea levels or the increases in skin cancers or the military importance of better air and water turbulence data but it would probably just confuse you.

You just go on along and buy yourself some beach real estate in, say, Tuvalu, and when you're drowning during an "anomalous" storm, drop me a line and we can discuss this again.

Rustin

All doomsday scenarios have been wrong? Not quite.

[perfessor multigeek]

[blah, blah, ill-thought out blah]Every doomsday scenario in history has thus far turned out to be wrong.

Depends on how you define "doomsday scenario", there, cobber.

Some Native Americans were predicting the destruction of their civilizations back in the mid-1700s but nobody much listened. Same thing re the decimating of the buffalo, passenger pigeon, dodo, and so on.

Greek politicians and scholars were predicting their own downfall and the conquest by Rome *way* before it happened. IIRC, some pretty insightful predictions were made about the time Pyrrus was creating a new word for useless battle triumph.

Michael Brown tried to warn Dubya before Katrina but Shrub just yawned.

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor one of their own admirals made a famous comment about "waking the sleeping tiger" that was none too happy and basically spot on.

And before that a U.S. military analyst had predicted Japanese imperialist island-hopping decades before it happened.

The sinking of a ship like the Titanic was laid out in great detail by a period writer.

Dozens (at least) of known examples exist of predictions of aircraft hitting the World Trade Center.

Plenty of Celts and, later Highlanders, predicted the triumph of the Romans and later, English.

And on and on and on.

Sometimes the Cassandras have a point. Sometimes it really doesn't come out okay.

-Rustin

Nice post!

[perfessor multigeek]

Not sure I agree with all of your conclusions but love your substantive approach. Facts, costs, context. I wish I had mod points to use up on this thred. You'd be getting at least one.

Rustin

It's all about the white hardware

[jimmoores]

NASA is caught in a trap. It has the ISS, which has to be the biggest white elephant of all time. It was going to be a dubiously useful space lab at one point, but since it has been down-scaled it has no point at all. It can only house a few crew now who must spend almost all their time on maintenance. The ISS has cost something like $50 billion. And for what? Just ask yourself - what does it DO for $50 billion. Not much.

Then there is the other piece of 'white' hardware, the Shuttle: why are we still bothering with it given.

1) It's enormous per-launch expense (~$1bn).
2) It's now dubious safety.

Well, the reason is the I in ISS. The US is committed to launching the components of the ISS built by international partners. This commitment is bound by international treaties. So NASA can't cancel it. Only the government could ever do that. However, both the Shuttle AND the ISS should be cancelled now rather than throwing more good money after bad.

Normally I wouldn't care about money being wasted on such things. I am not a US citizen, so I don't really have any right commenting on what you do with your own money. But the problem is that it is now affecting science missions in a BIG way, and I do care about that. NASA has worked out that they basically have this situation:

1) ISS + Shuttle.
2) Moon and Mars as human destinations, need new hardware (CEV etc).
3) Science missions (robotic probes, telescopes, etc).

Choose two.

They HAVE to choose 1+2 because they are bound to persue these by the US government - 1 because of international treaties and 2) because the President said so.

So it's up to American Citizens to let their representitives know that the real priorities should be (in my humble opinion):

3) and a new one: get the cheapest way to earth orbit - fund EXTERNAL research into space elevators, SSTO, TSTO, disposable launchers (SpaceX stuff) projects etc. Don't stop 'til you can launch people to LEO for $1million.

The only problem with this is that it would leave the US without access to orbit for longer which may be politically unacceptable - but it's no different from the current situation anyway.

Just my thoughts.

PS. I am referring to it as 'white' hardware purely because NASA human flight stuff always seems to be white. Oh yeah, and why did the first shuttle launch have a white fuel tank and later ones have an orange one?

interstellar probe program learning by iterations

[perfessor multigeek]

Sending a 1 ton probe to Alpha Centauri (that would get there within 50 years

I'd be satisfied if we could send a ten KILO probe to Alpha Centauri if it could take pictures and come back within, oh, a hundred and fifty years.

I'd guess that if somebody with their sh*t together and the right funding and staff (let's say the almost accepted applicants from Blue Origin) could get a one ton ship on the way in fifteen years. Start with a goal of sending multiple round-trip explorer robots to the moon within three years, the asteroid belt within five years, to the Kuiper belt within ten years, robot landers to the asteroids within eleven years, and then launching an interstellar probe by year fifteen.

Maybe I'm overoptimistic, but if so only by about ten years for the whole series if we assume redesigns based on performance of previous probes. Though this timeline assumes no NASA control at all, purely private organizations under private control.

Fifteen to twenty-five years to the launching of the first interstellar explorer. Think about it.

-Rustin

Re:6 billion a month, every month

[east coast]

they decided killing people or research into killing people more efficiently was much more profitable...

I hate to tell you this, AC, but the vast majority of all technological advancements that you have around you today in some way was spurred along by teh concept of using the technology to kill people more efficiently or helping those who try to kill people more efficiently.

It reminds me of the scene in the film "Manhatten Project" when the military man asked Lithgow if he thought that the lab was there for his intellectual stimulation because the reality was that it was there to help kill more people more efficeintly.

If you have a hard time with that concept I'm afraid you're SOL because that's the truth behind most of your "neat" gadgets today.

Re:interstellar probe program learning by iteratio

[koroviev (begemot)]

One kilogram probe would not be able to beam info back. BTW the weight of the probe doesnt matter much. The desired max speed is what influences gross weight mostly, given some specific impulse for some rocket engine. total mass (all stages) = mass of probe(i.e. payload) x e^(end speed/(specific impulse x 9.81))

(that holds for orbital launch, the g there is to get the dimensionality right)

So, lets take a 1 tons probe (nuclear reactor for power, lasers for comunication, instruments), 60 000 sec specific impulse for the rocket engines that would fling it towards Alpha Centauri (doable with Orion nuclear engine - the nuclear propulsion system that we have reserached mostly at the moment - in the '60s) and total launch weight of 200 tons (equal to the weight of the space station). end speed is then 11 000 000 m/s.

Proxima Centauri is 4.3 light years away = 4e16 meters

So, the probe would get there in about 120 years :)

Perfectly doable with all the knowledge, technology and resources we have (and have put to good use for other applications) today

Re:interstellar probe program learning by iteratio

[perfessor multigeek]

One kilogram probe would not be able to beam info back.

I agree, as you can see from my comment further down in the post. My point was that I'll take anything I can get at this stage of the game. Even a probe, any probe, scheduled to take five hundred years there and back would make me very happy as it would force us to address the technical issues involved and give kids something to aspire to as they work out what they want to do with their lives.

As for your mission duration numbers, I'd say that with ten years to design and build we should certainly be able to cut that down to fifty if it's done as a government mega-project. Given the idiocies we spend money on now, I might even agree that NASA should put exploratory money into next year's budget for such a probe.

But my point was that we don't have to wait for NASA at all. A far smaller organization with far less pork and distractions, getting experience by building a succession of probes going farther and farther within the solar system, using that learning curve as they go, could start today, be launching useful probes in five years, and interstellar not too long after that.

And I can guarantee you that Rutan, and/or Bezos and/or Branson and/or any of the several dozen other contenders think the very same thing.

Hell, if I had the resources that would certainly be on my radar.

Rustin

Re:All doomsday scenarios have been wrong? Not qui

[zardo]

No, "doomsday scenario" is not synonymous with "bad news". The simple definition is "the complete destruction of earth and or humanity". None of those could be misconstrued as the Apocalypse.

Watch the day after tomorrow to see what I'm talking about. Too much water vapor in the atmosphere could very well be our destruction, and may account for Mars evolution.

Re:Budget woes?

[kesuki]

Infant mortality by definition is in the calculation of life expectancy "If an age is not specified, life expectancy is understood to be from birth" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

for any other case you must say "life expectance of people age X is Y" where X is an arbitrary Age you specify (say 1 year, to 'avoid' infant mortality) and Y is equal to "the average age of death, minus X"

as to the rest of my comemnt i only want to clarify whay i brought in the japanese into the discussion, GGP was suggesting that 'vegitarian' diet fads would lead to a cessation of the eating of meat. diet fads are temporary, you really can't count on people to 'give up red meat' for multiple generations, when the addiction to red meat is an Evolved trait. and yeah, for quickly bulking up on muscle and fat, there are few better ways than to eat plenty of red meat.

Re:Budget woes?

[Surt]

Indeed, infant mortality would be part of the calculation of life expectancy, if you're keeping records. If you're dating fossilized remains, the odds that you're finding any infants to date are quite small, because their softer bones are less likely to survive.

And indeed, the whole point of the original vegeterianism leading to no meat preference post was that it would have to not just be practiced but preferred for mating over thousands of generations to overcome an existing evolved trait.